The study of factors affecting the level of fear of crime in residential neighborhoods, a study on scarcity trap theory (Case study: Ahwaz city)

This study seeks to determine which factors exacerbate the fear of crime and what components can limit or completely neglect this problem. This is a survey method that compares crime fears and their individual and neighborhood factors among Ahwaz neighborhoods. The data were collected from a sample of 4 residents of different areas of Ahwaz city using a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. The results showed that despite the different effects of the studied variables among different neighborhoods, among individual variables, gender had a significant relationship with fear of crime and women reported more fear of crime than men, And this was also the case for non-Arab ethnicity living in these areas. Other individual variables (age, education, income, and home ownership) had no significant relationship with fear of crime. On the other hand, neighborhood-related variables, including inattention, neighborhood attachment, neighborhood quality, and neighborhood crime perception were significantly associated with crime fear. In the multivariate regression, only the inferior variable entered the model and was able to explain 21% of the dependent variable changes. As in the findings of this study, witnessing vulgarism is one of the important factors in fear of crime. Thus, it seems that the satisfaction of the neighborhood decreases the fear of crime. Among the neighborhood related variables, neighborhood characteristics, sense of belonging to it, the view of people toward Police, and understanding of crime and vulgarism were reported to be meaningfully related to the fear of crime at all and worriment of crime against belongings and persons (not the sense of security). The point of view toward neighborhood and ownership of the home, did not show to have meaningful relationship with the fear of crime.