An Investigation of Individual Perceptions, Neighborhood, and Disorder

Author: Danielle Wallace

Dissertation School: University of Chicago

Abstract:

Disorder is violations of norms governing public behavior manifest. These violations manifest themselves in visual cues, such as litter or loitering. Disorder is associated with individuals’ fear of crime and victimization—specifically, the more disorder an individual perceives, the more they are fearful of crime and being victimized. At the neighborhood level, the presence of disorder is associated with poverty, social disorganization, and high crime rates. Because of this, individuals in poverty are often incorrectly thought of as being accepting of disorder and the neighborhood’s poor quality of life. In general, urban sociology assumes all individuals perceive disorder the same way. While some theorists have shown individuals’ disorder perceptions do vary, currently, no attempts have been made to understand why this variation occurs.

My dissertation is a first step toward filling some of the gaps in disorder research. My dissertation asks the following questions, which are broken down into four sets of hypotheses. Hypothesis Set 1 asks: Do individuals perceive disorder differently? If so, who perceives disorder differently? Do some individuals see more or less disorder?

My second set of hypotheses address disorder perceptions among the understudied population of public housing residents. Hypothesis Set 2 asks the following questions: What are the disorder perceptions of individuals’ living in public housing (that is, an area with a reliably high level of disorder)? Given that some researchers suggest that the poor need more disorder stimuli to perceive it as a problem, do public housing residents’ perceptions match this theory?

My third set of hypotheses explores how moving to a different neighborhood has on individuals’ disorder perceptions. Hypothesis Set 3 asks, given that these individuals have lived in an area with high levels of disorder, how does exposure to disorder in a prior neighborhood change the perceptions of disorder in one’s current neighborhood?

Finally, if residents have moved multiple times, how do their perceptions change with multiple moves? Hypothesis Set 4 addresses the impact of disorder in health and health related behaviors. Do certain disorder cues impact health more than others? Additionally, what is the relationship between changes in disorder cue perception and individuals’ health and health behaviors?

My dissertation uses a wide variety of methods, which are determined by the specific hypotheses. To test differences in disorder perceptions among the general population and public housing residents (Hypothesis Set 1 and 2), I will use a cross-sectional neighborhood and housing development effects model to address whether individuals differ in disorder perceptions while controlling for neighborhood. This type of model is ideal for these hypotheses since it controls for all the aspects of the neighborhood and housing development which might exert influence on individual perceptions; thus, the results yield truly individual differences.

To test the longitudinal differences in disorder perceptions in Chicago’s public housing residents (Hypothesis Set 3), disorder perceptions at time 1, fixed effects for the housing development and the neighborhood, and a slew of individual controls will predict disorder perceptions at time 2. With this model, I expect to show that housing development residents’ initial disorder perceptions influence their perceptions of their new neighborhoods; more specifically, that residents generally see their new neighborhoods in a more positive light. I also expect to show that disorder perceptions in their new neighborhood level out with time.

Hypothesis Set 4 addresses the impact of disorder on health and health-related behaviors using cluster corrected OLS regression and logistic regression models. Self-rated health, exercising, and walking are predicted by a set of individual and neighborhood control variables, and specific disorder cues, including abandoned buildings, graffiti, people hanging out, and vandalism, and their changes.

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