Fear of crime experienced by older Chinese in urban China

Abstract

Fear of crime has been a major social and political issue in Western societies. Previous studies have established that older people are disturbed disproportionately by fear of crime, which can accelerate their loss of physical and social functioning. Despite the rapidly ageing population and the sharp rise of crime in urban China, there is a paucity of research on the fear of crime in older Chinese, not to mention the lack of sound psychometric instruments or any established theoretical model.

This study systematically investigated the fear of crime in older Chinese living in urban China. It involves two phases. In Phase One of the study, existing measures on fear of crime, perceived risk of crime and constrained behaviors were culturally adapted through a series of consultation with expert panels and pilot testing. Results indicated that all adapted scales exhibited satisfactory internal reliability with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from .81 to .94.

In Phase Two of this study, an integrated theoretical model incorporating the vulnerability, environment perception, victimization and risk interpretation models was tested. The model takes into account relevant Chinese cultural values, while simultaneously addressing the impacts of fear of crime on mental health and constrained behaviors. A representative sample of 453 older adults aged 60 years or above was recruited from urban communities in Kunming, Yunnan using multistage sampling methods. Participants were individually interviewed. Results show that fear of crime was prevalent in this sample with 258 participants (57.0%) reporting fear of one or more types of depicted crimes. Path analyses show that the proposed integrated theoretical framework effectively captures the relationship between fear of crime and various hypothesized factors. The model accounted for 22.1% of the variance in perceived risk of crime, 35.8% in fear of crime, 31.2% in poor mental health and 21.4% in constrained behaviors. Perceived risk of crime played a central role in inducing fear of crime and mediated the associations between fear of crime and various hypothesized risk factors, including female gender, a younger age, higher perceived social instability, lower adherence to the Chinese cultural value of Harmony and more direct victimization by crime. In regard to impact, being fearful of crime predisposes participants to more constrained behaviors, while a high level of perceived risk impaired their mental health.

This study is among the first empirical endeavors to investigate fear of crime experienced by older Chinese. It provides preliminary support for the applicability of various prominent theoretical models in the Chinese setting. Results also established a novel association between fear of crime and the Chinese cultural value of Harmony. The integrated model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the underlying genesis mechanism of fear of crime experienced by older Chinese.