Fear of crime and the neighbourhood context in Canadian cities : Crainte de la criminalité et le contexte du quartier dans les villes canadiennes

The second model in Table 3 assessed whether the variation in fear of crime could be explained by the socio-economic, residential and dwelling features of the neighbourhoods, over and above the characteristics of individuals living in these neighbourhoods. [...] In this case, after adding the neighbourhood-level variables the reduction from the empty model in the proportion of the total variation in fear of crime that was explained by the neighbourhood-level was 27%, compared to 13% for the individual-level model. [...] Nevertheless, despite the statistically significant contributions of variables measuring the proportion of low income families, visible minorities and lone-parent families, a considerable amount of the total variation in fear of crime was left unexplained in the model, suggesting that the neighbourhood differences in levels of fear are not totally captured by the socio-economic conditions in those [...] Research on neighbourhood effects linked to individuals’ experiences of crime and victimization have pointed to the importance of neighbourhood features such as the quality and extent of social interaction among residents, the level of police-reported crime, and the type of land-use in the local area (Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls 1997). [...] The ICC indicates the proportion of the total variance in the outcome variable, fear of crime, that is explained by the neighbourhood-level and is equal to the variance between neighbourhoods divided by the sum of the between-neighbourhood variance and the individual-level variance (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002, 72).