Kurzbeschreibung
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-posted Neighborhood Watch signs might inadvertently undermine the program by conveying a normative message that crime is a problemin 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.
