Citation

Greenberg MS, Beach SR. Law Hum. Behav. 2004; 28(2): 177-186.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA. greenber+@pitt.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

15141777

Abstract

Previous research suggests that 3 general processes underlie the decision of property crime victims to notify the police: One that is cognitively driven by reward/cost considerations, one that is affectively driven, and another that is socially driven. This study is the first to employ a community sample of crime victims to compare the 3 processes within a single study. Computer-assisted interviews were conducted with 422 property crime victims (n = 129 burglary, n = 293 theft) located via a random digit dialing procedure. Logistic regression analyses showed that each process independently accounted for a significant amount of the variance in victim reporting, and that there were no interactions among the three processes in predicting reporting. Of the 3 processes, social influence was the best predictor of reporting. Analysis of the affect-driven process showed that reporting was primarily a function of the level of fear rather than anger or the level of generalized arousal upon discovering the crime.

Language: en