Elsevier

Preventive Medicine

Volume 62, May 2014, Pages 161-166
Preventive Medicine

Do changes in residents' fear of crime impact their walking? Longitudinal results from RESIDE

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.02.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined the influence of changes in fear of crime on changes in walking behaviour.

  • For each increase in fear of crime, total walking decreased by 22 min/week (p = 0.002).

  • The pattern was consistent for recreational (p = 0.031) and transport walking (p = 0.064).

  • Interventions that target fear of crime may be a means to increase walking levels.

  • Future research might explore these themes in more diverse populations and settings.

Abstract

Objective

To examine the influence of fear of crime on walking for participants in a longitudinal study of residents in new suburbs.

Methods

Participants (n = 485) in Perth, Australia, completed a questionnaire about three years after moving to their neighbourhood (2007–2008), and again four years later (2011–2012). Measures included fear of crime, neighbourhood perceptions and walking (min/week). Objective environmental measures were generated for each participant's neighbourhood, defined as the 1600 m road network distance from home, at each time-point. Linear regression models examined the impact of changes in fear of crime on changes in walking, with progressive adjustment for other changes in the built environment, neighbourhood perceptions and demographics.

Results

An increase in fear of crime was associated with a decrease in residents' walking inside the local neighbourhood. For each increase in fear of crime (i.e., one level on a five-point Likert scale) total walking decreased by 22 min/week (p = 0.002), recreational walking by 13 min/week (p = 0.031) and transport walking by 7 min/week (p = 0.064).

Conclusion

This study provides longitudinal evidence that changes in residents' fear of crime influence their walking behaviours. Interventions that reduce fear of crime are likely to increase walking and produce public health gains.

Introduction

Intuitively, we expect that the perception of an unsafe environment will induce people to constrain their walking or physical activity. However, whilst studies investigating the neighbourhood influences on physical activity routinely include some measure of perceived crime or safety, the findings in adult samples remain largely inconclusive (Foster and Giles-Corti, 2008). One critique of studies examining the relationship between perceptions of safety from crime and physical activity is a reliance on judgements or cognitive assessments of crime and safety, rather than emotional or affective responses to crime. For instance, it is plausible that people may judge an area to be unsafe due to crime, but unless the crime they perceive causes an emotional response, such as fear or anxiety, it may not impact their behaviour (Foster and Giles-Corti, 2008).

Relatively few studies investigating the impact of perceived safety on physical activity have incorporated measures best conceptualised as ‘fear of crime’ (Dawson et al., 2007, Foster et al., 2013c, Kramer et al., 2013, McGinn et al., 2008, Roman et al., 2009, Ross, 2000, Stafford, 2007). For example, in a sample of African Americans living in urban public housing developments, fear of crime was not associated with moderate intensity physical activity (Roman et al., 2009). In contrast, among older British civil servants, participation in vigorous intensity physical activities was lower among those reporting greater fear of crime, although there was no association with walking (Stafford, 2007). Similarly in the Netherlands, lower fear of crime was associated with increased odds of cycling (Kramer et al., 2013), and elsewhere, both Ross (2000) and Foster et al., 2013a, Foster et al., 2013b, Foster et al., 2013c identified that people who feared victimisation were less likely to walk (Foster et al., 2013c, Ross, 2000). Whilst there is some mixed evidence, on balance, these studies suggest that fear of crime may indeed be a deterrent to walking or physical activity.

Another limitation of studies examining crime-related safety and physical activity has been a reliance on cross-sectional study designs, with few studies using prospective or longitudinal designs (Dawson et al., 2007, Handy et al., 2008, Sallis et al., 2007). Moreover, just one longitudinal study appears to include an emotional measure of crime safety (Dawson et al., 2007). Dawson et al. (2007) examined perceived barriers to walking for older adults participating in a walking programme in the UK. Whilst they identified that worry about personal safety (e.g., being attacked) reduced at follow-up, this was not examined as a separate influence on changes in physical activity between baseline and follow-up. Indeed, to date, no studies appear to have examined the impact of changes in emotional responses to crime, such as fear of crime, on walking or physical activity.

This study addresses an important evidence gap by examining the influence of fear of crime on walking using a longitudinal study design. We examined: (1) whether changes in fear of crime influence changes in walking undertaken within the neighbourhood; and (2) whether the relationship between fear of crime and walking could be explained by other variables. Numerous individual, social and built environment factors have been associated with walking, including: neighbourhood perceptions (e.g., attractive aesthetics, physical disorder, traffic) (Cerin et al., 2009, Mendes de Leon et al., 2009, Nagel et al., 2008, Sugiyama and Ward-Thompson, 2008), aspects of social capital (e.g., social cohesion, collective efficacy) (Foster et al., 2013c, Mendes de Leon et al., 2009, Wen et al., 2007) and neighbourhood ‘walkability’ (Owen et al., 2007). Thus, we controlled for a range of factors to better illuminate any independent relationship between fear of crime and walking (see Fig. 1).

Section snippets

Study context

The RESIDential Environments (RESIDE) Project is a longitudinal natural experiment of people building houses and relocating to 73 new housing developments across Perth, Western Australia. All people building new homes in the study areas were invited to participate by the state water authority following the land transfer transaction (response rate of 33.4%). Participants completed a self-report questionnaire before they moved into their home (n = 1813), and on three occasions after relocation at

Results

Participants who completed both the baseline and follow-up surveys were on average 1.6 years older than those who completed baseline only. There were no significant differences in the other socio-demographic or walking variables, indicating that participant attrition did not influence the associations observed.

The mean changes in objective built environment variables and neighbourhood perceptions between baseline and follow-up are shown in Table 2. Change in fear of crime was the only variable

Discussion

For this sample of suburban residents, we found longitudinal evidence that increases in fear of crime were associated with decreases in the time spent walking in the neighbourhood. The relationship was most pronounced for total walking, however these associations also held true for recreational and transport walking. Whilst previous cross-sectional studies suggest a negative relationship between fear of crime and walking (Foster et al., 2013c, Ross, 2000) or physical activity (Dawson et al.,

Conclusion

This study provides longitudinal evidence that changes in residents' fear of crime influence their walking behaviours. We found that for every one level increase in fear of crime, participants walking inside their neighbourhood reduced by over 22 min, even after full adjustment. Thus, interventions that target resident's fear of crime may be a means to increase walking and improve public health outcomes. However, in order to design better interventions, there is a need to understand what factors

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) (#11828, #18922) and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant (#LP0455453). The first author is supported by a Healthway Health Promotion Research Fellowship (#21363), the third author by an NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy, Liveable Communities (#1061404), the fourth author by an NHMRC/National Heart Foundation Early Career Fellowship (#1036350) and the last author by an NHMRC

References (46)

  • T. Lorenc et al.

    Crime, fear of crime, environment, and mental health and wellbeing: mapping review of theories and causal pathways

    Health Place

    (2012)
  • N. Owen et al.

    Neighborhood walkability and the walking behavior of Australian adults

    Am. J. Prev. Med.

    (2007)
  • C. Ross

    Walking, exercising and smoking: does neighborhood matter?

    Soc. Sci. Med.

    (2000)
  • B.K. Scarborough et al.

    Assessing the relationship between individual characteristics, neighborhood context, and fear of crime

    J. Crim. Justice

    (2010)
  • T. Sugiyama et al.

    Associations between characteristics of neighbourhood open space and older people's walking

    Urban For. Urban Green.

    (2008)
  • T. Sugiyama et al.

    Physical activity for recreation or exercise on neighbourhood streets: associations with perceived environmental attributes

    Health Place

    (2009)
  • T. Sugiyama et al.

    Initiating and maintaining recreational walking: a longitudinal study on the influence of neighborhood green space

    Prev. Med.

    (2013)
  • L. Wood et al.

    The anatomy of the safe and social suburb: an exploratory study of the built environment, social capital and residents' perceptions of safety

    Health Place

    (2008)
  • H. Christian et al.

    A new urban planning code's impact on walking: the residential environments project

    Am. J. Public Health

    (2013)
  • J. Dawson et al.

    Perceived barriers to walking in the neighbourhood environment and change in physical activity levels over 12 months

    Br. J. Sports Med.

    (2007)
  • S. Farrall et al.

    Questioning the measurement of the ‘fear of crime’

    Br. J. Criminol.

    (1997)
  • S. Farrall et al.

    Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times

    (2009)
  • K. Ferguson

    Modeling fear of crime in Dallas neighborhoods: a test of social capital theory

    Crime Delinq.

    (2007)
  • Cited by (74)

    • The impact of crime and crime-related experiences, worries, and perceptions on travel behavior

      2023, Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
    • Te Ara Mua – Future Streets: Can a streetscape upgrade designed to increase active travel change residents’ perceptions of neighbourhood safety?

      2022, Wellbeing, Space and Society
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, an objectively measured safe place (based on reported crime) may be different to a place experienced subjectively as safe by residents (Cutts et al., 2009; Foster et al., 2016; Kyttä et al., 2014). Analyses of longitudinal data from the RESIDE study suggests a causal relationship between an increase over time in participants’ fear of crime – a subjective response - and a decline in time spent walking for transport and recreation (Foster et al., 2014). Various findings of the RESIDE study support the view that walking is influenced by a melding of neighbourhood people, place and traffic perceptions and attributes, both as they are subjectively experienced and can be objectively measured.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text