Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to compare the perceived risk of crimes between the lay public and experts. A hypothesis of the lay public's risk perception was deduced using the weight function of prospect theory. It was expected that the lay public would overestimate the number of personal injury crimes, which are statistically low, and underestimate the number of property crimes, which are statistically higher. Experts, on the other hand, were expected to correctly estimate the number of crimes in each category. One hundred and sixty undergraduate students and 259 police officers estimated an average annual number for each of 18 crimes. The results supported the hypothesis, revealing that the public overestimated the number of personal injury crimes, which rarely occur, and underestimated the number of property crimes, which occur frequently. Implications of these results for experts and how they communicate with the lay public regarding crime prevention were discussed.
