Examining the Relationship between Hukou Status, Perceived Neighborhood Conditions, and Fear of Crime in Guangzhou, China

Fengrui Jing,Suhong Zhou,Guangwen Song,Lin Liu

doi:10.3390/su12229614

Abstract

Fear of crime can lead to lower satisfaction with life and subjective well-being. The indicators of fear of crime vary from the social and cultural context, and the hukou (household registration) status causes unequal rights between local hukou and non-local hukou residents in China. To improve people’s perception of safety, this study takes hukou as an indicator of social vulnerability and examines the relationship between hukou, perceived neighborhood conditions, and fear of crime in China. A binary logistic regression model was used to analyze the 1727 residents garnered from the 2016 Project on Public Safety in Guangzhou Neighborhoods (PPSGN) in Guangzhou, China. The results show that women, victimization experience, physical and social disorder, and neighborhood policing are associated with residents’ fear of crime. Although hukou status has no statistically significant effect on fear of crime, hukou status significantly moderates the influence of perceived neighborhood conditions on fear of crime. That is, perceived neighborhood conditions’ effects on fear are conditional on one’s hukou status: non-local hukou, perception of the social disorder has more of the detrimental effect on fear, and perception of social integration has less of the helpful effect on fear. In sum, this study adds to the international literature by revealing the conditional effect of the hukou on fear in a Chinese city.

Highlights

Fear of crime, an important social issue, affects daily activities [1,2] and mental/physical health of individuals [3,4]
The results indicate no statistically significant direct effect of hukou status on fear of crime, hukou status does significantly moderate the effects of perceived neighborhood conditions on fear of crime
That is, perceived neighborhood conditions’ effects on fear are conditional on one’s hukou status: non-local hukou, perception of the social disorder has more of the detrimental effect on fear, and perception of social integration has less of the helpful effect on fear

Summary

Introduction

An important social issue, affects daily activities [1,2] and mental/physical health of individuals [3,4]. In line with increasing attention in cross-cultural studies in the field of fear of crime [10], recent literature on this construct has examined in non-Western contexts such as Turkey [11], Korea [12], Mexico [13], and China [14]. The amount of research on fear of crime in non-Western countries is still limited. It is useful to examine the correlates of fear of crime in these contexts as some correlates may vary across nations. Empirical fear of crime research in the Chinese context has verified the main claims of the theoretical approaches established in the West including the vulnerability model, disorder model, and victimization model [14,18,19,20]. Only a few studies have examined the impact of culture-specific factors on fear of crime in China [18], so more studies in this area are desired

Results

Discussion

Conclusion