Behavioral Models of Continuing the Neighborhood Watch Schemes

- The Relationship between the Attitudes Towards Crime Prevention and Sense of Community -

抄録

The objective of this study is to determine the latent psychological factors influencing people to continue their involvement in Neighborhood Watch Schemes. The subjects consist of 261 participants in local Neighborhood Watch schemes. We used data gathered from administering a questionnaire to participants in a Neighborhood Watch scheme to evaluate the attitudes and risk perceptions of the participants in relation to "stranger danger". Firstly, we analyzed the latent factors which influenced the participants' intention by using the factor analysis. Secondly, we verified whether the field data fit our behavioral model which hypothesized participants' attitudes towards crime prevention in relation to the Theory of Reasoned Action made by Ajzen and Fishbein. We obtained the following results: 1) We found out three latent factors such as "personal satisfaction through service", "perspective on service" and "perception of crime prevention". 2) We formulated our model of Participatory Intention as influenced by the two factors of "Perception of crime prevention" and "Perspective on service". In conclusion, our results suggested that "personal satisfaction through service" directly motivated "perception of crime prevention". Consequently, the fact that participants have a "perception of crime prevention" inspired their "participatory intention" to continue their involvement in the Neighborhood Watch scheme. We considered that participants might continue the schemes on the condition that they derived from the satisfaction through their sense of community.