 Out of sight: Contextualizing risk avoidant routine activityM.S. Andrea Hazelwood and Pamela Wilcox Journal of Criminal Justice, 2025, vol. 99, issue C Abstract: Individuals often attempt to mitigate crime risk through avoidance behaviors, thus shaping their routine activities. Several theoretical approaches help understand such avoidance behavior, including (1) a framework that views avoidance as a rational choice based on crime risk interpretation, and (2) a framework that views avoidance as rooted in perceptions of weakened collective security and police illegitimacy. The current study examines these perspectives simultaneously, using both fear of victimization and perception of police illegitimacy as key variables underlying avoidance behavior. Further, we examine the extent to which these two variables differentially serve as mechanisms underlying avoidance across demographic positionality (gender and race/ethnicity), place (urbanicity), and the intersection thereof. Using a representative sample of U.S. residents (N = 1500), we estimate structural equation models to observe the direct and indirect pathways linking positionality, perceived risk of victimization, attitudes towards police, and avoidance behaviors. Keywords: Crime avoidance; Fear of crime; Perceptions of police legitimacy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:99:y:2025:i:c:s0047235225000984 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2025.102449 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier |
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