Fear of Crime: Does Trust and Community Participation Matter?

Pavel Luengas () and Inder Ruprah ()
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Pavel Luengas: Office of Evaluation and Oversight at the Interamerican Development Bank.

No 808, OVE Working Papers from Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE)

Abstract: This paper examines the association between trust and community involvement with fear of crime. Fear of crime is measured by three typical perception measures: neighborhood security; walking alone in the dark; and the risk of becoming a victim. The data is from Chile’s Victimization Survey. The techniques used are a multinomial regression and an impact –propensity score single difference- calculation. We find that while trust matters participation generally does not for fear. However, regressions leave open the direction of causality. An impact calculation confirms that participation in a neighborhood crime prevention program does not affect the fear of crime. Thus the evidence challenges the general idea that involvement in one’s community and the specific idea of community participation in neighborhood crime prevention programs reduce fear and increase feelings of safety.

Keywords: Fear of crime; perceived safety; trust; community participation; multinomial logit regression; impact evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H43 I31 I38 K14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-law, nep-soc and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:ovewps:0808

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