Perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime: a case study of METU students

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Date

2011

Author

Gökulu, Gökhan

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Fear of crime is a phenomenon which affects individuals' standard of living and influences their everyday behaviors. In this sense, it can be said that if a person has high fear of crime, this will have a negative effect on his or her standard of living. Fear of crime does not always bear resemblance to the crime rate of the society. From this standpoint, residents of a region where crime rate is high do not always have high fear of crime. Similarly, the residents of a region where crime rate is low may have high fear of crime. This situation points out the need of an extensive analysis on fear of crime as a significant variable regarding individuals' standard of living. This study aims to examine the relationship between perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime. Studies about fear of crime mainly focus on gender differences, social inequalities and physical incivilities. all of this factor are important element to grasp its nature and dimensions of fear of crime. In addition to this factors fear of crime is affected by individuals risk perception of victimization. Our study aims to deal fear of crime concept among students in a multidimensional approach. In this respect, it will evaluate how much the students are afraid of and uncomfortable with being exposed to a crime rather than the assessing merely the possibility of being exposed to a crime. The study will measure the concept of fear of crime over the concept of anticipated fear according to Ferraro’s (1995) model. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the measurement of fear of crime the individuals show as a result of contacting other person and environment rather than the instantaneous fears. Our study will evaluate the Metu students’ fear of crime in terms of specific crimes rather than a general evaluation of crime in line with the approach of risk perception. In this sense, our study seeks to measure the fear of crime over certain crimes such as theft, robbery, simple attack, serious attack and sexual abuse.

Subject Keywords

Sociology., Crime prevention.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613830/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20757

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

G. Gökulu, “ Perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime: a case study of METU students ,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2011.