Fear of Crime and its Variation: Towards an Analysis of Individual Differences

Using dispositionalism, this article proposes a theoretical model to explain individualvariations in perceived victimization risk. The first part focuses on previous work. Thissection highlights the contributions and the difficulties of the main approaches explaining fear of crime. The second part considers the concept of “dispositional fear”. The ideais to propose a reading of this social phenomenon with regard to the dispositionalism ofLahire. We stress the lived past of the respondents, as shaped by the earlier threats theyexperienced, by their social and cultural representations of danger and by their individual characteristics, to account for their reactions to present situations.