Fear of street crime among Japanese mothers with elementary school children: A questionnaire survey using street montage photographs

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since physical crimes committed on the street against children typically occur during school commutes, there is an urgent need to address Japanese mothers’ fear of such crimes. Although previous studies have proven that several street elements affect parents’ fear of crime, these elements have been evaluated individually, and there is little analysis of fear of crime using computer graphics (CG) to visualize the scenes. In this study, 96 street montage photos were processed using a systematic mechanism based on the theory of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to visualize the variation in factors assuming interaction effects. The results indicate that the presence of signs on windows, obtuse angles of corner lots, commercial building usage, and tables and chairs on the ground floor may moderate mothers’ fear of physical crimes against their children in certain scenes. Moreover, several interaction effects that promoted or moderated the main effects of other factors were observed. These findings suggest that, to reduce mothers’ fear of crime, the identified factors should be considered together, rather than separately\\.