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Personal Security and Fear of Crime as Predictors of Subjective Well-Being

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Subjective Well-Being and Security

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 46))

Abstract

Over the last decade, influenced by various political, economical, and social changes, human security issues have become relevant topics at the global, national, and local level. In the present article, we were interested in how the fear of crime and perceptions of crime and substance abuse in the local area were associated with subjective well-being. The survey was conducted in November 2008 through face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of Croatian citizens (N = 4,000). Fear of crime was assessed by feelings of safety in three specific situations at night (in neighborhood streets, at home, and in public transport). Additionally, perceptions of the prevalence of different types of crime and substance abuse (corruption, minor crime, violent crime, delinquency, domestic abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse) in the local area were measured. Overall life satisfaction was used as well-being measure. Measures of various demographic variables were also included in the analyses (i.e., age, gender, income, education level), as well as the objective measures of urbanization level and crime rates in the counties where participants live. In accordance with previous findings, results showed relatively little association of most demographic characteristics with fear and perception of crime and substance abuse. The urbanization level and crime rates were positively related to both fear and perceptions of crime. Living in more urbanized areas and higher crime rates were associated with higher fear of crime and greater perception of all types of crime as problems. While controlling for demographic variables and objective measures of local conditions, better life satisfaction was significantly but weakly predicted by higher feelings of safety and by lower perceptions of corruption in the local area.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     The contacted person was asked the number of adults and the number of women in the household and the interviewer selected a participant on the basis of 2  ×  2 matrix that crosses sex with age (Troldahl and Carter 1964). This method is a widely accepted technique for systematically selecting respondents from households and ensures that the sample accurately represents the eligible population according to its age and sex structure (Gaziano 2005).

  2. 2.

     The CBS is a state administrative organization of the official statistics system of the Republic of Croatia.

  3. 3.

     The latest census in Croatia was in the year 2001, so population numbers were based on estimates.

  4. 4.

    In analyses, treatment of missing values was set on “pairwise” which sometimes resulted in different N of cases per analyses.

  5. 5.

    Post hoc comparison results are available from the authors upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb, Croatia

    Renata Franc & Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovčan

  2. Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Zvjezdana Prizmic-Larsen

Authors
  1. Renata Franc
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  2. Zvjezdana Prizmic-Larsen
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  3. Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovčan
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Correspondence to Renata Franc .

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    Eduardo Wills-Herrera

Appendix

Appendix

Tables 4.6 and 4.7.

Table 4.6 Review by counties: number of reported adult perpetrators of criminal offenses in 2008, natural change of population for 2008, and crime rate for each county in 2008
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Table 4.7 One-way ANOVAs results for each predictor variables separately performed by age, gender, income, education, urbanization level, and crime rate
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Franc, R., Prizmic-Larsen, Z., Lipovčan, L.K. (2012). Personal Security and Fear of Crime as Predictors of Subjective Well-Being. In: Webb, D., Wills-Herrera, E. (eds) Subjective Well-Being and Security. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2278-1_4

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