Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract : Nowadays, fear of crime (feelings of insecurity) has emerged as a distinct social fact and even more important than the crime itself. Most of the researches in Iran have done in a descriptive manner and focused on demographic factors. However, findings of these researches show that there were not feelings of security (subjective) compared to the security (objective) ones. Furthermore, fear of crime can be influenced by a number of factors in micro, meso and macro level so that the police have no control over them. The present study pursues two main goals: first, the examination of theoretical and empirical literature of fear of crime and feelings of insecurity (property and personal). Second the determination of the extent of fear of crime and some factors which influence it. Findings of the this study that was carried out on a sample of citizens in zanjan city by using survey method shows that they have not been very fearful and contextual factors (perceived risk of victimization, satisfaction of neighborhood, attitude towards local police and residential region) have more explanatory power than personal factors (e.g. age, education, income).