Determinants of fear of crime: The effect of cultural setting

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Abstract
During the past 10 years, a body of literature has emerged to identify determinants of fear of crime such as neighborhood conditions, victimization experiences, and demographic characteristics. Few conceptual models have been developed, however, which explore simultaneously the relative explanatory value of these determinants, and no research to date has examined the effects of these models across divergent cultural settings. This research extends the fear of crime literature in two ways: by investigating the simultaneous relationships among the aforementioned factors and by estimating the effects of cultural setting on fear of crime. Using survey data based on interviews with citizens in cities in the United States and in Belize, we estimate the model and make comparisons within and across models. Although the relative effects of the variables in the model are different in magnitude, the findings show that similar factors predict fear of crime in both cultural settings.