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ABSTRACT
THE INFLUENTIAL FACTORS OF CRIME-FEAR﹘AN ANALYSIS OF TAIWAN PEOPLE
by
KUO, CHIN-CHENG
August 2004
ADVISOR: Dr. TSAI, MING-CHANG
DEPARTMENT: GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY
MAJOR: SOCIOLOGY
DEGREE: MASTER OF SOCIOLOGY
The objective of this study was to analyze the models of behavior and the influential factors of crime-fear of Taiwanese people. On what kind of social basis, an individual will generate different kind of crime-fear? This study suggested three important facets in measuring crime-fear, they were ”the experience of being crime victims”, “the fear of crimes”, and “the evaluation on the degree of seriousness of the crimes”. From analyzing the nation-wide random samples (n=2052) collected in year 2001, which were based on the second term of the fourth period of “Fundamental Investigation Project on Taiwan Social Changes” conducted by the graduate school of sociology of Central Research Yuan, several important findings were found as follows:
On “the experience of being crime victims”, sex, tribe, and urbanization were the important factors that decided whether Taiwan people had the experience of being crime victims. When sex being “male”, tribe being “aboriginals”, and urbanization being “live in a brandnew commercial and industrial combined services cities or towns”, had independent significance in the experience of being crime victims. On “the evaluation of Taiwan peoples’ feeling about the degree of seriousness of crimes”, sex, tribe, and urbanization were important factors in deciding Taiwan peoples’ evaluation about the degree of seriousness of crimes. When sex being “female”, age being “order”, tribe being “Taiwan-Hakkas”, and residence being “provincial counties or cities”, the degree of crime seriousness was evaluated as “serious”, and they had independent significance. As to the Fukien-Taiwanese who took up higher percentage of the valid samples, educational degree and occupation were not the factors that decided personal evaluation on the seriousness degree of crimes. On the facet of the “fear of crimes”, sex and educational degree were important factors that decided whether Taiwan people were under the fear of crimes. When sex being ”female”, and educational degree being “graduate school”, they showed independent significance in the fear of being crime victims; besides, personal evaluations upon the degree of seriousness of crimes was also an important factor in deciding whether Taiwan people were afraid of crimes. Both “personal evaluation on the seriousness degree of crimes”, and “the situation of individual’s fear of crime” had independent significance, and which would not modulate under the influence of age, tribe, occupation, urbanization, and experience of being crime victims. As to the Fukien-Taiwanese who took up higher percentage of the valid samples, age, tribe, occupation, urbanization and experience of being crime victims were not the factors that decided individual’s personal fear of being crime victims. In considering the relations between personal experience of being a crime victim and the evaluation on the seriousness degree of crimes, the reasons of the fear of crimes might be closely related to the breaking up of the community, the aberration of society, too many social problems, and so on. So the subjective acknowledge of individual was the major influence to the situation of crime fear, and it had nothing to do with the personal experience of being crime victims.
In analyzing the reasons of the fear of crimes of Taiwan people, besides considering the variation problems in sex, tribe, educational degree, the influence of urbanization (residence) and occupation, the influence of social cultural background and personal subjective acknowledgement should also be valued and considered as important. And though this study did not support the viewpoint that stated “age, tribe, and occupation had influence upon personal fear about crimes”; yet it did not mean that so long as the social structures were in unity, there were no age, tribe, and occupation variations. So what worth our concern, was that after controlling the influence of the variants such as population peculiarity, if there were still variations existed among age, tribe, and occupation in the feelings of crime-fear, the sources of these variations might be caused from the variations in personal social culture background or personal social networks.
Keyword: crime-fear, sense of crime-fear, the experience of being crime victims, the evaluation on the seriousness degree of crimes, the fear of crimes
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