Impact of the Perceived Crime at the Local and National Levels

Abstract

The cognition mechanism on crime rather than the actual cause of crime has become an important topic of interest for criminologists and the public who have experienced concern and fear rather than an actual criminal victimization. We compared the effects of population and condition variables at the local and national levels on the perceived crime through the ‘Korean Crime Victims Survey’ of 28,416 South Koreans. This study presents that there are significant differences in the influence of independent variables such as the environment around the neighborhood, interaction with the neighborhood, policing in the neighborhood, fear of night, victimization of crime and media consumption at the local and national levels. Variables such as dissatisfaction with the environment around the neighborhood, experience of crime victimization, and more media consumption elevated the perceived crime across both the local and national levels. Moreover, we found that the lack of interaction with neighbors had the only significant impact on increasing the perceived crime at the local level, and dissatisfaction with policing in the neighborhood had little influence on increasing the perceived crime at the local level. However, good policing in the neighborhood had a significant effect on decreasing the perceived crime at the local and national levels. According to the results, the consumption of media had a significant effect on increasing the perceived crime at the local and national levels. However, the consumption of media affected the perceived crime at the national level as the second highest effect after victimization of crime, while the perceived crime at the local level was found to have the least significant effect among the independent variables. This study presents the relationship between the perceived crime and other individual indicators while controlling for socio-demographic variables. We also provide differences of the indicators’ effects on the perceived crime at the local and national levels.