“There goes the fear”: Feelings of safety at home and in the neighbourhood: the role of personal, social and service factors

Safety has been shown to be an important contributor to mental wellbeing and is often identified as a key element of sustainable communities. Drawing on the fear of crime literature this paper investigates the determinants of feelings of indoor and outdoor safety for people living in deprived areas, using both cross-sectional and longitudinal samples from household surveys in 15 communities in Glasgow. Across the different models social cohesion, satisfaction with services and perceived empowerment emerge as the most robust predictors of feeling very safe indoors and outside. Our findings suggest useful extensions to several theoretical models of the fear of crime: the vulnerability hypothesis should include social vulnerability more generally; environmental models should focus on local amenities and services as well as on disorder; and social-psychological models should consider not only informal social control but resident empowerment in relation to housing and neighbourhood issues