Past work has linked incivilities to fear of crime but has left open two questions: Do multilevel impacts of incivilities persist after simultaneously controlling for sociodemographics, perceptions of crime risk, neighborhood fabric, and violent crime? Is neighborhood fear spatially lagged, and if so, does controlling for nearby fear alter endogenous impacts on fear? Survey data from 45 Philadelphia neighborhoods showed that those perceiving more incivilities and more crime risk than their neighbors were more fearful. Furthermore, neighborhoods where residents on average saw more crime risk were on average more fearful, even after controlling for significantly auto-correlated nearby neighborhood fear. The results suggest that impacts of incivilities on fear at the individual level are not completely mediated by perceived risk and that average fear levels in nearby neighborhoods correlate significantly, suggesting that some localized processes are operating above the neighborhood level. What these are, and how they link to neighborhood- and individual-level dynamics, remains to be investigated.
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