Author: Schultz, P. Wesley
Title: A Social Norms Approach to Community-Based Crime Prevention: Implicit and Explicit Messages on Neighborhood Watch Signs
Summary: The Neighborhood Watch program is the nation's largest and most visible community-based crime prevention program. Indeed, the Neighborhood Watch sign itself has become a prominent mainstay of the suburban American landscape. However, recent developments in social psychological theory suggest that publicly-posed Neighborhood Watch signs might inadvertently undermine the program by conveying a normative message that crime is a problem in the community. A series of three laboratory experiments was conducted to evaluate the effects of Neighborhood Watch signs on perceived crime rates, likelihood of victimization, community safety, and estimates of home and community quality. The studies utilized a simulated community tour in which participants were shown images of houses and communities and were asked to rate them along several dimensions. The presence and content of Neighborhood Watch signs was experimentally varied across the three studies. The first study focused on the development and testing of the community tour and sign stimuli, and evaluated the overall effect of the signs in an average middle class community. The second study replicated the basic effects from Study 1 and extended the research to examine the moderating role of community socioeconomic status (SES) on the effects of the signs. Finally, the third study explored the potential for the physical condition of Neighborhood Watch signs to moderate the impact of the signs in low and high SES communities.
Details: San Marcos, CA: California State University, San Marcos, 2009. 82p.
Source:
Year: 2009
Country: United States
URL:
Shelf Number: 114901
Keywords:
Community Crime PreventionCrime Prevention PublicityNeighborhood WatchSocioeconomic Status |
