Fear of Crime and Its Relation to Other Worries About External Threats: Commonalities and Inter-individual Differences, With a Special Focus on Personal Values

Abstract

Fear of crime is examined here as a specific type of worry. A facet-theoretical mapping sentence is developed for worries about external threats. Threats are classified by two facets: life-area and social environment of the threat. It is hypothesized that all worries are positively intercorrelated. When representing the intercorrelations as distances by multidimensional scaling, it is predicted that the threat’s facets give rise to a radex, with life-area generating polar regions and social environment concentric regions. Worries of the secondary environment are expected to be stronger than those of the primary environment. Worry levels are also expected to be related to personal values, and to gender, education, but not age: Individuals prioritizing tradition/security should generally
worry more than individuals striving for universalistic/benevolent goals, especially about immigrants; women are predicted to generally worry more than men, especially about becoming victimized; education is expected to be negatively correlated with worries; and age is predicted to be uncorrelated with worrying, in general. Based on the data from two recent representative surveys conducted in German cities (with 5,487 and 9,973 respondents), all hypotheses are confirmed and replicated. It is concluded that when considering actions to reduce fear of crime, one may also consider non-crime issues (e.g., economic well-being, education, or general order) while keeping an eye on people’s personal values.