Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral SciencesCollective Efficacy and Crime

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Collective Efficacy and Crime UC Irvine UC Irvine Previously Published Works Title Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/53k5g3w4 ISBN Authors Hipp, John R Wo, James C Publication Date DOI 10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.45045-2 Copyright Information This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Collective efficacy: Problems and Prospects John R. Hipp* James Wo March 6, 2014 Word count (including references): 5,069 Postprint: Published in In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 169- 173. Elsevier 2015 * Department of Criminology, Law and Society and Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine. Address correspondence to John R. Hipp, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, 3311 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA 92697; email: [email protected]. Phone: 949-824-8247. 1 Abstract In this essay, we explore the literature on collective efficacy and crime, but pay attention to three large challenges that confront this literature, and researchers moving forward with the concept in studies of neighborhoods. These challenges are: 1) precisely defining and measuring the concept of collective efficacy; 2) determining whether the notions of general cohesion and trust in neighborhoods are really components of collective efficacy, or determinants of it; 3) whether neighborhood crime can have feedback effects on the level of collective efficacy. 2 Collective efficacy: Problems and Prospects Collective efficacy is a construct that originally comes out of the psychology literature, and the writings of Albert Bandura (Bandura 1982, 1986). Although the psychology literature has explored the empirical effects of collective efficacy for various relatively small groups, arguably its largest impact on social science literature comes from the introduction of the concept to the neighborhoods and communities literature by Robert Sampson and colleagues (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). A voluminous literature that is largely sociological and criminological has explored the effect of collective efficacy on a number of community processes, including neighborhood crime rates. In this essay, we explore the literature on collective efficacy and crime, but pay attention to three large challenges that confront this literature, and researchers moving forward with the concept in studies of neighborhoods. These challenges are: 1) precisely defining and measuring the concept of collective efficacy; 2) determining whether the notions of general cohesion and trust in neighborhoods are really components of collective efficacy, or determinants of it; 3) whether neighborhood crime can have feedback effects on the level of collective efficacy. A brief history of the concept of collective efficacy Collective efficacy was initially introduced as a concept by Albert Bandura (Bandura 1982, 1986). Building on his notion of self-efficacy, Bandura noted that “Perceived collective efficacy will influence what people choose to do as a group, how much effort they put into it, and their staying power when group efforts fail to produce results” (Bandura 1982: 143). His early consideration of the idea mostly conceptualized collective efficacy as a property of very large groups, such as nations and social movements (Bandura 1986: 449-453). This spawned a 3 number of studies in the psychology literature in the 1990s and into the 2000s focusing on collective efficacy as a property of small groups, such as sports teams and work organizations (Zaccaro et al. 1995). Collective efficacy is conceptualized in this literature as a fundamentally group phenomenon that “…fosters groups' motivational commitment to their missions, resilience to adversity, and performance accomplishments…”, and an emergent phenomenon in which “the locus of perceived collective efficacy resides in the minds of group members” (Bandura 2000: 76) The key twist the in trajectory of collective efficacy as a concept in the social sciences arguably came when Sampson and colleagues introduced the concept to the neighborhoods and communities literature. In what has since become a citation classic, their study in Science introduced the concept as a property of neighborhoods that might be able to reduce the level of violence (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). This seminal study focused on neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, and proposed defining collective efficacy as the combination of a general sense of residents’ willingness to provide informal social control along with high levels of trust and solidarity among residents. They argued for the plausibility of this broader conceptualization of collective efficacy compared to that developed in the psychology literature because "the willingness of local residents to intervene for the common good depends in large part on conditions of mutual trust and solidarity among neighbors" (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997: 919). The cross-sectional study indeed found that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy exhibited lower levels of violence (whether measured as perceived violence, violent victimization, or homicide events). This single study has fostered an army of subsequent research. 4 Sampson himself has further refined the concept of collective efficacy in subsequent work. In particular, he has argued that it is a concept that helps focus on social mechanisms, and moves away from a risk-factor approach (Sampson 2006). In this sense, he considers it a mediating variable between neighborhood structural characteristics and crime. He emphasizes that this concept is fundamentally about repeated interactions, which then impact expectations about the future (residents’ beliefs about the actions of their fellow residents) (Sampson 2006). Sampson’s work on collective efficacy and neighborhood crime can be seen in his recent book that chronicles the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) as a large study of neighborhoods in Chicago (Sampson 2012). Collective efficacy: challenges of measurement Measuring informal social control in neighborhoods is actually quite a challenging problem. The challenge is that informal social control activity is only on display in moments in which there are challenges to the social order. This potential response on the part of residents is typically hypothetical, or latent. Thus, attempting to measure the behavior of informal social control is difficult because of its rarity. This is both a methodological challenge (for measurement) as well as a theoretical challenge. More commonly, studies have relied on questions that are hypothetical about how the respondent would behave in a particular instance (Warner 2007). In the case of studies measuring collective efficacy, the hypothetical questions ask respondents how they believe their neighbors would behave in various situations (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). Answering such questions will sometimes be difficult if residents have never seen their neighbors be confronted by situations requiring informal social control behavior and require them to speculate on the answer. This speculation is particularly likely in 5 neighborhoods with low levels of crime in disorder (St. Jean 2007: 211). Besides these issues around uncertainty is the challenge of measuring a group concept by surveying individuals. This issue remains unresolved in the literature; as Zaccaro et al (Zaccaro et al. 1995) note, “…a more useful approach to defining collective efficacy is to consider both judgments of members’ abilities and perceptions of how well group members work together in achieving collective outcomes” (309). Other approaches have instead attempted to measure collective efficacy using behavioral measures. For example, one study suggested that parental monitoring may represent collective efficacy in action (Rankin and Quane 2002). Another study used the presence of registered voters as a proxy for the collective efficacy in a streetblock (Weisburd, Groff, and Yang 2012). One unique and clever approach to measuring collective efficacy in neighborhoods constructed a website that allowed residents of neighborhoods to start webpages, and then assessed the usage of the pages as one measure of collective efficacy (Hampton 2008). An interesting finding was that there were two extremes of neighborhoods that generated such webpages: new middle class suburban neighborhoods, and truly disadvantaged neighborhoods, suggesting that such a measure may be tapping some different processes than the more conventional measures of collective efficacy. Distinguishing between cohesion and informal social control: one construct, or causally related? Although Sampson and colleagues defined collective efficacy in neighborhoods as being a combination of both cohesion/trust and expectations of informal social control, there is debate about this strategy. It is worth noting that the psychology literature has typically conceived of cohesion and collective efficacy as two separate constructs, which may separately impact one 6 another in a causal fashion (Zaccaro et al. 1995). Empirical evidence in the communities and crime literature suggests that these may indeed be distinct constructs in many locations. Horne (2004) notes that the two measures are not always highly correlated, and that high levels of cohesion do not necessarily increase norm enforcement. A study in Chicago suggested that informal social control attitudes mediated the relationship between neighborhood cohesion and crime (Rhineberger-Dunn and Carlson 2011). A study of Tianjin, China found a correlation of just .43 between neighborhood cohesion and informal control, suggesting that they are in fact distinct constructs (Zhang et al. 2002). A study that split cohesion and expectations of informal social control found that whereas cohesion had a negative effect on perceived incivilities in the neighborhood, expectations of informal social control had no impact (Reisig and Cancino 2004). A study of Mesa, AZ found minimal factor analysis evidence for combining these two constructs, and also found that only cohesion had a negative effect on violent crime when both were included in the model simultaneously (Armstrong, Katz, and Schnebly 2010). A study of Brisbane neighborhoods using a confirmatory factor analysis strategy also found no evidence for combining these two constructs; furthermore this study used measures capturing collective efficacy for three distinct tasks, and all of them were distinct from a measure of cohesion (Wickes et al. 2013). Another study measured neighborhood attachment rather than cohesion, and found that higher levels of attachment led to higher levels of expectations of informal social control (Burchfield 2009; Silver and Miller 2004). A key assumption of the neighborhood collective efficacy literature is that these norms and attitudes within a neighborhood that lead residents to perceive higher levels of collective efficacy then translate into actual higher levels of informal social control behavior. Thus, “"Social movements and collective efficacy theory share a common orienting framework-a focus 7 on the mobilization of action for an intended purpose” (Sampson et al. 2006: 4). As Steenbeek and Hipp (2011: 839) noted: “expectations that others will intervene (potential social control) need not necessarily result in people actually intervening more (actual social control behavior), even though this is implicitly assumed by social disorganization theory.” However, only a few studies have addressed this question empirically, and the evidence so far appears somewhat weak. For example, one study in the Netherlands did not have a robust measure of collective efficacy, but did use longitudinal data to test and find that the potential for social control (measured by a single question asking about residents’ willingness to improve the neighborhood) in fact did not increase social control behavior two years later (Steenbeek and Hipp 2011). A study of neighborhoods in Brisbane focused on residents who reported a high level of disorder in the neighborhood, and found that higher levels of reported collective efficacy did not in fact lead to more actual informal social control behavior (Wickes et al. 2012). Instead, this study found that higher levels of neighboring increased the likelihood of engaging in informal social control behavior. As another example, a study using an experimental design concluded that norms are more likely to be enforced when there are benefits that increase social interaction, which suggests that cohesion might be more important for fostering action than residents’ perceptions of informal social control potential (Horne 2004). Studies assessing the consequences of collective efficacy in neighborhoods A number of studies have assessed the cross-sectional relationship between neighborhood collective efficacy and crime, with studies almost always finding a negative relationship. The seminal study of Chicago found such an effect (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997), and subsequent studies in Chicago have also detected this negative relationship (Sampson and 8 Raudenbush 1999; Morenoff, Sampson, and Raudenbush 2001; Schreck, McGloin, and Kirk 2009). This relationship has also been detected in other locations, including Stockholm (Sampson and Wikstrom 2008), Los Angeles (Burchfield and Silver 2013), Tianjin, China (Zhang, Messner, and Liu 2007), and Brisbane (Mazerolle, Wickes, and McBroom 2010). A challenge with some cross-sectional studies is the use of victimization reports as the outcome measure; in such studies the independent variable of collective efficacy is measured at one point in time but the dependent variable of victimization is assessed based on incidents that occurred during the previous year, introducing a temporal problem. Studies have also assessed the relationship between neighborhood collective efficacy and various other outcomes, typically in cross-sectional designs. For example, studies in Chicago have found a negative relationship between collective efficacy and partner violence (Browning 2002; Wright and Benson 2011), risky sexual behavior by adolescents (Browning et al. 2008), sexual initiation by adolescents (Browning, Leventhal, and Brooks-Gunn 2005), self-control by children (Gibson et al. 2010), self-rated physical health (Browning and Cagney 2002), and mortality during a heat wave (Browning et al. 2006). However, one study in Chicago found countervailing evidence, as impulsivity had an even stronger effect on offending in neighborhoods with high levels of collective efficacy (Zimmerman 2010). This negative relationship between collective efficacy and various outcome measures has also been detected in other cities, including such outcomes as substance use by adolescents (Erickson et al. 2012) and bullying in school (Williams and Guerra 2011). A longitudinal study found that collective efficacy increased authoritative parenting, which reduced delinquency among adolescents; it also found that authoritative parenting had the strongest effect in high collective efficacy neighborhoods (Simons et al. 2005). One study explored how school social controls were 9 weakened in low collective efficacy neighborhoods when measuring the outcome of suspensions and arrest (Kirk 2009). However, a study in England only found a negative relationship between collective efficacy and adolescent delinquency in economically deprived neighborhoods, but not in more economically advantaged neighborhoods (Odgers et al. 2009). Sampson (2006) points out that a distinction can be made between a theory of neighborhood crime rates and one of individual development, which is a distinction between enduring effects and situational effects. In this framework, collective efficacy may be more appropriately considered a situational theory. Indeed, a study in Chicago found no relationship between collective efficacy and violence committed by specific racial group members (Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush 2005) suggesting that collective efficacy may operate as a situational factor impacting crime events, and not as a factor creating offenders. Other research has found that robbers are less likely to offend in a high collective efficacy neighborhood, again emphasizing the role of collective efficacy in situational theories (Bernasco and Block 2009). The possible feedback effect from neighborhood crime to collective efficacy Relatively understudied is the possibility that crime may have a feedback effect on neighborhood-level collective efficacy. This feedback possibility has been discussed by Sampson (2006)(Sampson and Raudenbush 1999). Indeed, St. Jean (2007: 211) argued that research needs “to pay close attention to the reciprocal relationship between high collective efficacy and low crime rates” because “…under conditions of low crime, neighbors are quite likely to report high estimates of trust and solidarity among themselves, and of the willingness of others to intervene” even though we do not know if they will actually intervene. 10 Nonetheless, studies have rarely accounted for this likely endogenous relationship between collective efficacy and crime, and instead often simply assume a one-directional causal relationship from collective efficacy to crime. One study tested and found such a negative feedback effect from crime to collective efficacy in a cross-sectional analysis utilizing instrumental variables (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999). A cross-sectional study of neighborhoods in Mesa, AZ also used instrumental variables and found a negative feedback effect from crime to collective efficacy (Armstrong, Katz, and Schnebly 2010), and a cross- sectional study of 100 urban neighborhoods found a similar feedback effect on residents’ expectations of informal social control with the use of instrumental variables (Bellair 2000). Occasional research has ignored the possible effect of collective efficacy on crime and simply tested the reverse posited causal path; for example, one study found that violent crime had a negative relationship with neighborhood collective efficacy (Duncan et al. 2003), whereas another found that violent crime was associated with lower levels of trust in a neighborhood (Garcia, Taylor, and Lawton 2007). Social networks and collective efficacy Another thorny theoretical and methodological issue concerns disentangling the effects of the social network of residents in a neighborhood, the level of cohesion, and the level of collective efficacy. Besides the considerable conceptual overlap in these concepts, there is also a considerable overlap in how they operate in neighborhoods. An additional challenge is that actually measuring the social network of ties among residents in a neighborhood is extremely difficult, and studies are typically constrained to proxying neighborhood ties by asking a sample of residents to report how many neighbors they know. Such measures are simply estimates of 11 mean degree in a neighborhood and do not capture any richer information about the full network (Bursik 1999). Therefore, one recent study adopted the novel approach of simulating the networks existing in neighborhoods based on certain well-understood properties of network tie formation, and detected strong negative relationships between various structural network measures and crime in micro-units (Hipp et al. 2013). Beyond these measurement challenges, there are at least three perspectives on how the social network of a neighborhood and the level of collective efficacy might be related: 1) a dense network of ties in a neighborhood leads to more collective efficacy; 2) a dense network of ties is necessary for, but not sufficient for, neighborhood collective efficacy; 3) there is no consistent relationship between the network of ties and collective efficacy. The first perspective builds on the insights of systemic theory and the importance of the network of ties among residents for fostering behavior (Kasarda and Janowitz 1974). It is difficult to conceive of a neighborhood with high levels of cohesion but lacking dense social networks. Indeed, a study focusing on the actual provision of informal social control behavior in response to observed problems among residents of Brisbane neighborhoods found that the most important predictor of such behavior was a higher density of neighborhood ties, and not assessments of collective efficacy (Wickes et al. 2012). In the second perspective, social networks are a necessary, but not sufficient, characteristic for a neighborhood to develop collective efficacy. Sampson (2006) argues that the relationship between dense networks and informal social control capability in neighborhoods is more tenuous, and that in some neighborhoods dense ties can actually inhibit social control behavior. Empirically, Sampson (2006) showed that indicators of friendship ties loaded on a different factor than the collective efficacy indicators. In short, networks may provide social 12 capital for offenders, as well as others in the neighborhood (Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz 2004). For example, Browning (2009) suggested that dense networks can bring together offenders and conventional residents, which then weakens the effect of collective efficacy in this “negotiated coexistence” model. In the third perspective, there is enough inconsistency in how neighborhood networks and collective efficacy relate that no pattern can be distinguished. For example, a study using in- depth interviews in two high collective efficacy neighborhoods found that strong social ties were not necessary: instead symbols of community and collective representations generated higher levels of collective efficacy (Wickes 2010). Notably, this same study noted that key neighborhood institutions and organizations were crucial for responding to problems, suggesting that formal organizations may be understudied in this literature. Theoretical extensions of the collective efficacy construct There have been various theoretical extensions to the collective efficacy model in recent years. One important direction is recent research that has emphasized the importance of the task- specific nature of collective efficacy. Just as self-efficacy is in respect to a specific task, likewise collective efficacy is fundamentally in respect to a specific task. Despite the importance of the task-specific nature of the collective efficacy construct, nearly all studies in the communities and crime literature have tested it as a unitary phenomenon. Thus, researchers often refer to the “collective efficacy” of a neighborhood as if it is a unitary phenomenon, rather than the “collective efficacy regarding X specific task.” Not only does this lose the conceptual richness of the construct, but it also increases the risk of allowing the concept of collective efficacy to slide into a measure of “everything good” about a neighborhood, a charge sometimes leveled 13 against the concept of social capital (Portes 1998). In response to this lacuna, a study of Brisbane neighborhoods measured collective efficacy for three distinct tasks and not only found important differences in the determinants of each of these, but also found that these tasks were distinct from the more global construct of cohesion and trust (Wickes et al. 2013). Thus, making a distinction between residents’ collective efficacy regarding addressing violence in the neighborhood, vs. addressing confronting misbehaving children, vs. addressing political/civic matters demonstrated that neighborhoods and individuals differed regarding these particular tasks. There are also other developments. In an example of theoretical integration, some research has attempted to integrate the legal cynicism literature with collective efficacy. For example, one study found that collective efficacy mediated the relationship between highly cynical neighborhoods and the probability of arrest (Kirk and Matsuda 2011). Another strand of research has developed the notion of “street efficacy” for residents. In this view, adolescents with high street efficacy choose the streets that they frequent in order to avoid violence, which has consequences for the environments in which they find themselves (Sharkey 2006). Another research strand focuses on how perceptions of collective efficacy might impact the perceptions of other neighborhood characteristics---even the neighborhood’s boundaries. For example, a study suggested that residents in neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy perceive their neighborhoods to be larger in size (Coulton, Jennings, and Chan 2013). Conclusion Collective efficacy is clearly a hugely important concept in the communities and crime literature, which has spawned considerable theoretical and empirical excitement. There is a large 14 body of literature that has detected a negative relationship between the level of collective efficacy in a neighborhood and the crime rate. However, important directions need to be explored. One important direction is distinguishing whether collective efficacy operates differently in high versus low disorder neighborhoods. St. Jean argued that collective action is only necessary if the block is attractive to offenders: if the block is not desirable to offenders, there will not be crime regardless of what residents do (St. Jean 2007: 164) A second important direction is longitudinal research of this relationship. Given the very plausible expectation of a feedback effect from neighborhood crime to perceptions of collective efficacy, as well as the suggestive evidence from cross-sectional studies, there is clearly a strong need for longitudinal research to determine whether the collective efficacy and crime relationship is robust. References Armstrong, Todd A., Charles M. Katz, and Stephen M. Schnebly. 2010. The Relationship Between Citizen Perceptions of Collective Efficacy and Neighborhood Violent Crime. Crime & Delinquency. Bandura, Albert. 1982. Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist 37 (2):122-147. ———. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Edited by A. Bandura, Series in Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ———. 2000. Exercise of Human Agency through Collective Efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science 9 (3):75-78. Bellair, Paul E. 2000. Informal Surveillance and Street Crime: A Complex Relationship. Criminology 38 (1):137-167. Bernasco, Wim, and Richard L. Block. 2009. Where Offenders Choose to Attack: A Discrete Choice Model of Robberies in Chicago. Criminology 47 (1):93-130. Browning, C. R., T. Leventhal, and J. Brooks-Gunn. 2005. Sexual initiation in early adolescence: The nexus of parental and community control. American Sociological Review 70 (5):758- Browning, Christopher R. 2002. The span of collective efficacy: Extending social disorganization theory to partner violence. Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (4):833- ———. 2009. Illuminating the Downside of Social Capital. American Behavioral Scientist 52 (11):1556-1578. 15 Browning, Christopher R., Lori A. Burrington, Tama Leventhal, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. 2008. Neighborhood Structural Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and Sexual Risk Behavior among Urban Youth. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 49 (3):269-285. Browning, Christopher R., and Kathleen A. Cagney. 2002. Neighborhood Structural Disadvantage, Collective Efficacy, and Self-Rated Physical Health in an Urban Setting. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43 (4):383-399. Browning, Christopher R., Seth L. Feinberg, and Robert D. Dietz. 2004. The Paradox of Social Organization: Networks, Collective Efficacy, and Violent Crime in Urban Neighborhoods. Social Forces 83 (2):503-534. Browning, Christopher R., Danielle Wallace, Seth L. Feinberg, and Kathleen A. Cagney. 2006. Neighborhood social processes, physical conditions, and disaster-related mortality: The case of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. American Sociological Review 71 (4):661-678. Burchfield, Keri B. 2009. Attachment as a source of informal social control in urban neighborhoods. Journal of Criminal Justice 37 (1):45-54. Burchfield, Keri B., and Eric Silver. 2013. Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox. Sociological Inquiry 83 (1):154- Bursik, Robert J. 1999. The Informal Control of Crime through Neighborhood Networks. Sociological Focus 32 (1):85-97. Coulton, C. J., M. Z. Jennings, and T. Chan. 2013. How Big is My Neighborhood? Individual and Contextual Effects on Perceptions of Neighborhood Scale. American Journal of Community Psychology 51 (1-2):140-150. Duncan, Terry E., Susan C. Duncan, Hayrettin Okut, Lisa A. Strycker, and Hollie Hix-Small. 2003. A Multilevel Contextual Model of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy. American Journal of Community Psychology 32 (3-4):245-252. Erickson, Patricia G., Lana Harrison, Steven Cook, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, and Edward M. Adlaf. 2012. A comparative study of the influence of collective efficacy on substance use among adolescent students in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal. Addiction Research & Theory 20 (1):11-20. Garcia, R. Marie, Ralph B. Taylor, and Brian A. Lawton. 2007. Impacts of Violent Crime and Neighborhood Structure on Trusting Your Neighbors. Justice Quarterly 24 (4):679-704. Gibson, Chris L, Christopher J Sullivan, Shayne Jones, and Alex R Piquero. 2010. 'Does It Take a Village?' Assessing Neighborhood Influences on Children's Self-Control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 47 (1):31-62. Hampton, Keith. 2008. Glocalization: Internet Use and Collective Efficacy. Unpublished Manuscript:36. Hipp, John R., Carter T. Butts, Ryan M. Acton, Nicholas N. Nagle, and Adam Boessen. 2013. Extrapolative Simulation of Neighborhood Networks based on Population Spatial Distribution: Do they Predict Crime? Social Networks 35 (4):614-625. Horne, Christine. 2004. Collective Benefits, Exchange Interests, and Norm Enforcement. Social Forces 82 (3):1037-1062. Kasarda, John D., and Morris Janowitz. 1974. Community Attachment in Mass Society. American Sociological Review 39 (3):328-339. Kirk, David S. 2009. Unraveling the Contextual Effects on Student Suspension and Juvenile Arrest: The Independent and Interdependent Influences of School, Neighborhood, and Family Social Controls. Criminology 47 (2):479-520. 16 Kirk, David S., and Mauri Matsuda. 2011. Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest. Criminology 49 (2):443-472. Mazerolle, Lorraine, Rebecca Wickes, and James McBroom. 2010. Community Variations in Violence: The Role of Social Ties and Collective Efficacy in Comparative Context. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 47 (1):3-30. Morenoff, Jeffrey D., Robert J. Sampson, and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2001. Neighborhood Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and the Spatial Dynamics of Urban Violence. Criminology 39 (3):517-559. Odgers, Candice L., Terrie E. Moffitt, Laura M. Tach, Robert J. Sampson, Alan Taylor, Charlotte L. Matthews, and Avshalom Caspi. 2009. The Protective Effects of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy on British Children Growing Up in Deprivation: A Developmental Analysis. Developmental Psychology 45 (4):942-957. Portes, Alejandro. 1998. Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1):1-24. Rankin, Bruce H., and James M. Quane. 2002. Social Contexts and Urban Adolescent Outcomes: The Interrelated Effects of Neighborhoods, Families, and Peers on African-American Youth. Social Problems 49 (1):79-100. Reisig, Michael D., and Jeffrey Michael Cancino. 2004. Incivilities in Nonmetropolitan Communities: The Effects of Structural Constraints, Social Conditions, and Crime. Journal of Criminal Justice 32 (1):15-29. Rhineberger-Dunn, Gayle M., and Susan M. Carlson. 2011. An Analysis of the Mediating Effects of Social Relations and Controls on Neighborhood Crime Victimization. Western Criminology Review 12 (1):15-34. Sampson, Robert J. 2006. Collective Efficacy Theory: Lessons Learned and Directions for Future Inquiry. In Taking Stock: The Status of Criminological Theory, edited by F. T. Cullen, J. P. Wright and K. R. Blevins. New Brunswick: Transaction. ———. 2006. How Does Community Context Matter? Social Mechanisms, and the Explanation of Crime Rates. In The Explanation of Crime: Context, Mechanisms, and Development, edited by P.-O. H. Wikstrom and R. J. Sampson. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago. Sampson, Robert J., Doug McAdam, Heather MacIndoe, and Simon Weffer-Elizondo. 2006. Civil Society Reconsidered: The Durable Nature and Community Organizational Context of Collective Civic Action. American Journal of Sociology 111 (3):673-714. Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2005. Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence. American Journal of Public Health 95 (2):224- Sampson, Robert J., and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 1999. Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods. American Journal of Sociology 105 (3):603-651. Sampson, Robert J., Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science 277 (August 15):918- Sampson, Robert J., and Per-Olof H. Wikstrom. 2008. The Social Order of Violence in Chicago and Stockholm Neighborhoods: A Comparative Inquiry. In Order, Conflict, and 17 Violence, edited by S. N. Kalyvas, I. Shapiro and T. Masoud. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Schreck, Christopher J, Jean Marie McGloin, and David S. Kirk. 2009. On the Origins of the Violent Neighborhood: A Study of the Nature and Predictors of Crime-Type Differentiation across Chicago Neighborhoods. Justice Quarterly 26 (4):7710794. Sharkey, Patrick T. 2006. Navigating dangerous streets: The sources and consequences of street efficacy. American Sociological Review 71 (5):826-846. Silver, Eric, and Lisa L. Miller. 2004. Sources of Informal Social Control in Chicago Neighborhoods. Criminology 42 (3):551-584. Simons, Ronald L., Leslie Gordon Simons, Callie Harbin Burt, Gene H. Brody, and Carolyn Cutrona. 2005. Collective Efficacy, Authoritative Parenting and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of a Model Integrating Community- and Family-Level Processes. Criminology 43 (4):989-1029. St. Jean, Peter K.B. 2007. Pockets of Crime: Broken Windows, Collective Efficacy, and the Criminal Point of View. Chicago: University of Chicago. Steenbeek, Wouter, and John R. Hipp. 2011. A Longitudinal Test of Social Disorganization Theory: Feedback Effects among Cohesion, Social Control and Disorder. Criminology 49 (3):833-871. Warner, Barbara D. 2007. Directly Intervene or Call the Authorities? A Study of Forms of Neighborhood Social Control Within a Social Disorganization Framework. Criminology 45 (1):99. Weisburd, David, Elizabeth Groff, and Sue-Ming Yang. 2012. The Criminology of Place. New York: Oxford. Wickes, Rebecca, John R. Hipp, Elise Sargeant, and Ross Homel. 2013. Collective efficacy as a task specific process: Examining the relationship between social ties, neighborhood cohesion and the capacity to respond to violence, delinquency and civic problems. American Journal of Community Psychology 52 (1-2):115-127. Wickes, Rebecca, John R. Hipp, Elise Sargeant, and Lorraine Mazerolle. 2012. Social Ties, Collective Efficacy and Actions: What Influences Informal Social Control Behaviors? Under review. Wickes, Rebecca L. 2010. Generating Action and Responding to Local Issues Collective Efficacy in Context. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 43 (3):423- Williams, Kirk R., and Nancy G. Guerra. 2011. Perceptions of Collective Efficacy and Bullying Perpetration in Schools. Social Problems 58 (1):126-143. Wright, Emily M., and Michael L. Benson. 2011. Clarifying the Effects of Neighborhood Context on Violence 'Behind Closed Doors'. JQ: Justice Quarterly 28 (5):775-798. Zaccaro, Stephen J., Virginia Blair, Christopher Peterson, and Michelle Zazanis. 1995. Collective Efficacy. In Self-efficacy, Adaptation, and Adjustment: Theory, Research, and Application, edited by J. E. Maddux. New York: Plenum. Zhang, Lening, Steven F. Messner, and Jianhong Liu. 2007. A Multilevel Analysis of the Risk of Household Burglary in the City of Tianjin, China. British Journal of Criminology 47 (6):918-937. Zhang, Lening, Steven F. Messner, Jianhong Liu, and Yue Angela Zhuo. 2002. Guanxi and Fear of Crime in Contemporary Urban China. British Journal of Criminology 49 (4):472-490. 18 Zimmerman, Gregory. 2010. Impulsivity, Offending, and the Neighborhood: Investigating the Person–Context Nexus. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 26 (3):301-332. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral SciencesCollective Efficacy and Crime

Hipp, John R.; Wo, James C.
Unpaywall — Jan 1, 2015
Download PDF
20 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/unpaywall/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-amp-behavioral-sciences-Ye93xADftF

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

DOI
10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.45045-2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

UC Irvine UC Irvine Previously Published Works Title Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/53k5g3w4 ISBN Authors Hipp, John R Wo, James C Publication Date DOI 10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.45045-2 Copyright Information This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Collective efficacy: Problems and Prospects John R. Hipp* James Wo March 6, 2014 Word count (including references): 5,069 Postprint: Published in In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 169- 173. Elsevier 2015 * Department of Criminology, Law and Society and Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine. Address correspondence to John R. Hipp, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, 3311 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA 92697; email: [email protected]. Phone: 949-824-8247. 1 Abstract In this essay, we explore the literature on collective efficacy and crime, but pay attention to three large challenges that confront this literature, and researchers moving forward with the concept in studies of neighborhoods. These challenges are: 1) precisely defining and measuring the concept of collective efficacy; 2) determining whether the notions of general cohesion and trust in neighborhoods are really components of collective efficacy, or determinants of it; 3) whether neighborhood crime can have feedback effects on the level of collective efficacy. 2 Collective efficacy: Problems and Prospects Collective efficacy is a construct that originally comes out of the psychology literature, and the writings of Albert Bandura (Bandura 1982, 1986). Although the psychology literature has explored the empirical effects of collective efficacy for various relatively small groups, arguably its largest impact on social science literature comes from the introduction of the concept to the neighborhoods and communities literature by Robert Sampson and colleagues (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). A voluminous literature that is largely sociological and criminological has explored the effect of collective efficacy on a number of community processes, including neighborhood crime rates. In this essay, we explore the literature on collective efficacy and crime, but pay attention to three large challenges that confront this literature, and researchers moving forward with the concept in studies of neighborhoods. These challenges are: 1) precisely defining and measuring the concept of collective efficacy; 2) determining whether the notions of general cohesion and trust in neighborhoods are really components of collective efficacy, or determinants of it; 3) whether neighborhood crime can have feedback effects on the level of collective efficacy. A brief history of the concept of collective efficacy Collective efficacy was initially introduced as a concept by Albert Bandura (Bandura 1982, 1986). Building on his notion of self-efficacy, Bandura noted that “Perceived collective efficacy will influence what people choose to do as a group, how much effort they put into it, and their staying power when group efforts fail to produce results” (Bandura 1982: 143). His early consideration of the idea mostly conceptualized collective efficacy as a property of very large groups, such as nations and social movements (Bandura 1986: 449-453). This spawned a 3 number of studies in the psychology literature in the 1990s and into the 2000s focusing on collective efficacy as a property of small groups, such as sports teams and work organizations (Zaccaro et al. 1995). Collective efficacy is conceptualized in this literature as a fundamentally group phenomenon that “…fosters groups' motivational commitment to their missions, resilience to adversity, and performance accomplishments…”, and an emergent phenomenon in which “the locus of perceived collective efficacy resides in the minds of group members” (Bandura 2000: 76) The key twist the in trajectory of collective efficacy as a concept in the social sciences arguably came when Sampson and colleagues introduced the concept to the neighborhoods and communities literature. In what has since become a citation classic, their study in Science introduced the concept as a property of neighborhoods that might be able to reduce the level of violence (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). This seminal study focused on neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, and proposed defining collective efficacy as the combination of a general sense of residents’ willingness to provide informal social control along with high levels of trust and solidarity among residents. They argued for the plausibility of this broader conceptualization of collective efficacy compared to that developed in the psychology literature because "the willingness of local residents to intervene for the common good depends in large part on conditions of mutual trust and solidarity among neighbors" (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997: 919). The cross-sectional study indeed found that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy exhibited lower levels of violence (whether measured as perceived violence, violent victimization, or homicide events). This single study has fostered an army of subsequent research. 4 Sampson himself has further refined the concept of collective efficacy in subsequent work. In particular, he has argued that it is a concept that helps focus on social mechanisms, and moves away from a risk-factor approach (Sampson 2006). In this sense, he considers it a mediating variable between neighborhood structural characteristics and crime. He emphasizes that this concept is fundamentally about repeated interactions, which then impact expectations about the future (residents’ beliefs about the actions of their fellow residents) (Sampson 2006). Sampson’s work on collective efficacy and neighborhood crime can be seen in his recent book that chronicles the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) as a large study of neighborhoods in Chicago (Sampson 2012). Collective efficacy: challenges of measurement Measuring informal social control in neighborhoods is actually quite a challenging problem. The challenge is that informal social control activity is only on display in moments in which there are challenges to the social order. This potential response on the part of residents is typically hypothetical, or latent. Thus, attempting to measure the behavior of informal social control is difficult because of its rarity. This is both a methodological challenge (for measurement) as well as a theoretical challenge. More commonly, studies have relied on questions that are hypothetical about how the respondent would behave in a particular instance (Warner 2007). In the case of studies measuring collective efficacy, the hypothetical questions ask respondents how they believe their neighbors would behave in various situations (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). Answering such questions will sometimes be difficult if residents have never seen their neighbors be confronted by situations requiring informal social control behavior and require them to speculate on the answer. This speculation is particularly likely in 5 neighborhoods with low levels of crime in disorder (St. Jean 2007: 211). Besides these issues around uncertainty is the challenge of measuring a group concept by surveying individuals. This issue remains unresolved in the literature; as Zaccaro et al (Zaccaro et al. 1995) note, “…a more useful approach to defining collective efficacy is to consider both judgments of members’ abilities and perceptions of how well group members work together in achieving collective outcomes” (309). Other approaches have instead attempted to measure collective efficacy using behavioral measures. For example, one study suggested that parental monitoring may represent collective efficacy in action (Rankin and Quane 2002). Another study used the presence of registered voters as a proxy for the collective efficacy in a streetblock (Weisburd, Groff, and Yang 2012). One unique and clever approach to measuring collective efficacy in neighborhoods constructed a website that allowed residents of neighborhoods to start webpages, and then assessed the usage of the pages as one measure of collective efficacy (Hampton 2008). An interesting finding was that there were two extremes of neighborhoods that generated such webpages: new middle class suburban neighborhoods, and truly disadvantaged neighborhoods, suggesting that such a measure may be tapping some different processes than the more conventional measures of collective efficacy. Distinguishing between cohesion and informal social control: one construct, or causally related? Although Sampson and colleagues defined collective efficacy in neighborhoods as being a combination of both cohesion/trust and expectations of informal social control, there is debate about this strategy. It is worth noting that the psychology literature has typically conceived of cohesion and collective efficacy as two separate constructs, which may separately impact one 6 another in a causal fashion (Zaccaro et al. 1995). Empirical evidence in the communities and crime literature suggests that these may indeed be distinct constructs in many locations. Horne (2004) notes that the two measures are not always highly correlated, and that high levels of cohesion do not necessarily increase norm enforcement. A study in Chicago suggested that informal social control attitudes mediated the relationship between neighborhood cohesion and crime (Rhineberger-Dunn and Carlson 2011). A study of Tianjin, China found a correlation of just .43 between neighborhood cohesion and informal control, suggesting that they are in fact distinct constructs (Zhang et al. 2002). A study that split cohesion and expectations of informal social control found that whereas cohesion had a negative effect on perceived incivilities in the neighborhood, expectations of informal social control had no impact (Reisig and Cancino 2004). A study of Mesa, AZ found minimal factor analysis evidence for combining these two constructs, and also found that only cohesion had a negative effect on violent crime when both were included in the model simultaneously (Armstrong, Katz, and Schnebly 2010). A study of Brisbane neighborhoods using a confirmatory factor analysis strategy also found no evidence for combining these two constructs; furthermore this study used measures capturing collective efficacy for three distinct tasks, and all of them were distinct from a measure of cohesion (Wickes et al. 2013). Another study measured neighborhood attachment rather than cohesion, and found that higher levels of attachment led to higher levels of expectations of informal social control (Burchfield 2009; Silver and Miller 2004). A key assumption of the neighborhood collective efficacy literature is that these norms and attitudes within a neighborhood that lead residents to perceive higher levels of collective efficacy then translate into actual higher levels of informal social control behavior. Thus, “"Social movements and collective efficacy theory share a common orienting framework-a focus 7 on the mobilization of action for an intended purpose” (Sampson et al. 2006: 4). As Steenbeek and Hipp (2011: 839) noted: “expectations that others will intervene (potential social control) need not necessarily result in people actually intervening more (actual social control behavior), even though this is implicitly assumed by social disorganization theory.” However, only a few studies have addressed this question empirically, and the evidence so far appears somewhat weak. For example, one study in the Netherlands did not have a robust measure of collective efficacy, but did use longitudinal data to test and find that the potential for social control (measured by a single question asking about residents’ willingness to improve the neighborhood) in fact did not increase social control behavior two years later (Steenbeek and Hipp 2011). A study of neighborhoods in Brisbane focused on residents who reported a high level of disorder in the neighborhood, and found that higher levels of reported collective efficacy did not in fact lead to more actual informal social control behavior (Wickes et al. 2012). Instead, this study found that higher levels of neighboring increased the likelihood of engaging in informal social control behavior. As another example, a study using an experimental design concluded that norms are more likely to be enforced when there are benefits that increase social interaction, which suggests that cohesion might be more important for fostering action than residents’ perceptions of informal social control potential (Horne 2004). Studies assessing the consequences of collective efficacy in neighborhoods A number of studies have assessed the cross-sectional relationship between neighborhood collective efficacy and crime, with studies almost always finding a negative relationship. The seminal study of Chicago found such an effect (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997), and subsequent studies in Chicago have also detected this negative relationship (Sampson and 8 Raudenbush 1999; Morenoff, Sampson, and Raudenbush 2001; Schreck, McGloin, and Kirk 2009). This relationship has also been detected in other locations, including Stockholm (Sampson and Wikstrom 2008), Los Angeles (Burchfield and Silver 2013), Tianjin, China (Zhang, Messner, and Liu 2007), and Brisbane (Mazerolle, Wickes, and McBroom 2010). A challenge with some cross-sectional studies is the use of victimization reports as the outcome measure; in such studies the independent variable of collective efficacy is measured at one point in time but the dependent variable of victimization is assessed based on incidents that occurred during the previous year, introducing a temporal problem. Studies have also assessed the relationship between neighborhood collective efficacy and various other outcomes, typically in cross-sectional designs. For example, studies in Chicago have found a negative relationship between collective efficacy and partner violence (Browning 2002; Wright and Benson 2011), risky sexual behavior by adolescents (Browning et al. 2008), sexual initiation by adolescents (Browning, Leventhal, and Brooks-Gunn 2005), self-control by children (Gibson et al. 2010), self-rated physical health (Browning and Cagney 2002), and mortality during a heat wave (Browning et al. 2006). However, one study in Chicago found countervailing evidence, as impulsivity had an even stronger effect on offending in neighborhoods with high levels of collective efficacy (Zimmerman 2010). This negative relationship between collective efficacy and various outcome measures has also been detected in other cities, including such outcomes as substance use by adolescents (Erickson et al. 2012) and bullying in school (Williams and Guerra 2011). A longitudinal study found that collective efficacy increased authoritative parenting, which reduced delinquency among adolescents; it also found that authoritative parenting had the strongest effect in high collective efficacy neighborhoods (Simons et al. 2005). One study explored how school social controls were 9 weakened in low collective efficacy neighborhoods when measuring the outcome of suspensions and arrest (Kirk 2009). However, a study in England only found a negative relationship between collective efficacy and adolescent delinquency in economically deprived neighborhoods, but not in more economically advantaged neighborhoods (Odgers et al. 2009). Sampson (2006) points out that a distinction can be made between a theory of neighborhood crime rates and one of individual development, which is a distinction between enduring effects and situational effects. In this framework, collective efficacy may be more appropriately considered a situational theory. Indeed, a study in Chicago found no relationship between collective efficacy and violence committed by specific racial group members (Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush 2005) suggesting that collective efficacy may operate as a situational factor impacting crime events, and not as a factor creating offenders. Other research has found that robbers are less likely to offend in a high collective efficacy neighborhood, again emphasizing the role of collective efficacy in situational theories (Bernasco and Block 2009). The possible feedback effect from neighborhood crime to collective efficacy Relatively understudied is the possibility that crime may have a feedback effect on neighborhood-level collective efficacy. This feedback possibility has been discussed by Sampson (2006)(Sampson and Raudenbush 1999). Indeed, St. Jean (2007: 211) argued that research needs “to pay close attention to the reciprocal relationship between high collective efficacy and low crime rates” because “…under conditions of low crime, neighbors are quite likely to report high estimates of trust and solidarity among themselves, and of the willingness of others to intervene” even though we do not know if they will actually intervene. 10 Nonetheless, studies have rarely accounted for this likely endogenous relationship between collective efficacy and crime, and instead often simply assume a one-directional causal relationship from collective efficacy to crime. One study tested and found such a negative feedback effect from crime to collective efficacy in a cross-sectional analysis utilizing instrumental variables (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999). A cross-sectional study of neighborhoods in Mesa, AZ also used instrumental variables and found a negative feedback effect from crime to collective efficacy (Armstrong, Katz, and Schnebly 2010), and a cross- sectional study of 100 urban neighborhoods found a similar feedback effect on residents’ expectations of informal social control with the use of instrumental variables (Bellair 2000). Occasional research has ignored the possible effect of collective efficacy on crime and simply tested the reverse posited causal path; for example, one study found that violent crime had a negative relationship with neighborhood collective efficacy (Duncan et al. 2003), whereas another found that violent crime was associated with lower levels of trust in a neighborhood (Garcia, Taylor, and Lawton 2007). Social networks and collective efficacy Another thorny theoretical and methodological issue concerns disentangling the effects of the social network of residents in a neighborhood, the level of cohesion, and the level of collective efficacy. Besides the considerable conceptual overlap in these concepts, there is also a considerable overlap in how they operate in neighborhoods. An additional challenge is that actually measuring the social network of ties among residents in a neighborhood is extremely difficult, and studies are typically constrained to proxying neighborhood ties by asking a sample of residents to report how many neighbors they know. Such measures are simply estimates of 11 mean degree in a neighborhood and do not capture any richer information about the full network (Bursik 1999). Therefore, one recent study adopted the novel approach of simulating the networks existing in neighborhoods based on certain well-understood properties of network tie formation, and detected strong negative relationships between various structural network measures and crime in micro-units (Hipp et al. 2013). Beyond these measurement challenges, there are at least three perspectives on how the social network of a neighborhood and the level of collective efficacy might be related: 1) a dense network of ties in a neighborhood leads to more collective efficacy; 2) a dense network of ties is necessary for, but not sufficient for, neighborhood collective efficacy; 3) there is no consistent relationship between the network of ties and collective efficacy. The first perspective builds on the insights of systemic theory and the importance of the network of ties among residents for fostering behavior (Kasarda and Janowitz 1974). It is difficult to conceive of a neighborhood with high levels of cohesion but lacking dense social networks. Indeed, a study focusing on the actual provision of informal social control behavior in response to observed problems among residents of Brisbane neighborhoods found that the most important predictor of such behavior was a higher density of neighborhood ties, and not assessments of collective efficacy (Wickes et al. 2012). In the second perspective, social networks are a necessary, but not sufficient, characteristic for a neighborhood to develop collective efficacy. Sampson (2006) argues that the relationship between dense networks and informal social control capability in neighborhoods is more tenuous, and that in some neighborhoods dense ties can actually inhibit social control behavior. Empirically, Sampson (2006) showed that indicators of friendship ties loaded on a different factor than the collective efficacy indicators. In short, networks may provide social 12 capital for offenders, as well as others in the neighborhood (Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz 2004). For example, Browning (2009) suggested that dense networks can bring together offenders and conventional residents, which then weakens the effect of collective efficacy in this “negotiated coexistence” model. In the third perspective, there is enough inconsistency in how neighborhood networks and collective efficacy relate that no pattern can be distinguished. For example, a study using in- depth interviews in two high collective efficacy neighborhoods found that strong social ties were not necessary: instead symbols of community and collective representations generated higher levels of collective efficacy (Wickes 2010). Notably, this same study noted that key neighborhood institutions and organizations were crucial for responding to problems, suggesting that formal organizations may be understudied in this literature. Theoretical extensions of the collective efficacy construct There have been various theoretical extensions to the collective efficacy model in recent years. One important direction is recent research that has emphasized the importance of the task- specific nature of collective efficacy. Just as self-efficacy is in respect to a specific task, likewise collective efficacy is fundamentally in respect to a specific task. Despite the importance of the task-specific nature of the collective efficacy construct, nearly all studies in the communities and crime literature have tested it as a unitary phenomenon. Thus, researchers often refer to the “collective efficacy” of a neighborhood as if it is a unitary phenomenon, rather than the “collective efficacy regarding X specific task.” Not only does this lose the conceptual richness of the construct, but it also increases the risk of allowing the concept of collective efficacy to slide into a measure of “everything good” about a neighborhood, a charge sometimes leveled 13 against the concept of social capital (Portes 1998). In response to this lacuna, a study of Brisbane neighborhoods measured collective efficacy for three distinct tasks and not only found important differences in the determinants of each of these, but also found that these tasks were distinct from the more global construct of cohesion and trust (Wickes et al. 2013). Thus, making a distinction between residents’ collective efficacy regarding addressing violence in the neighborhood, vs. addressing confronting misbehaving children, vs. addressing political/civic matters demonstrated that neighborhoods and individuals differed regarding these particular tasks. There are also other developments. In an example of theoretical integration, some research has attempted to integrate the legal cynicism literature with collective efficacy. For example, one study found that collective efficacy mediated the relationship between highly cynical neighborhoods and the probability of arrest (Kirk and Matsuda 2011). Another strand of research has developed the notion of “street efficacy” for residents. In this view, adolescents with high street efficacy choose the streets that they frequent in order to avoid violence, which has consequences for the environments in which they find themselves (Sharkey 2006). Another research strand focuses on how perceptions of collective efficacy might impact the perceptions of other neighborhood characteristics---even the neighborhood’s boundaries. For example, a study suggested that residents in neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy perceive their neighborhoods to be larger in size (Coulton, Jennings, and Chan 2013). Conclusion Collective efficacy is clearly a hugely important concept in the communities and crime literature, which has spawned considerable theoretical and empirical excitement. There is a large 14 body of literature that has detected a negative relationship between the level of collective efficacy in a neighborhood and the crime rate. However, important directions need to be explored. One important direction is distinguishing whether collective efficacy operates differently in high versus low disorder neighborhoods. St. Jean argued that collective action is only necessary if the block is attractive to offenders: if the block is not desirable to offenders, there will not be crime regardless of what residents do (St. Jean 2007: 164) A second important direction is longitudinal research of this relationship. Given the very plausible expectation of a feedback effect from neighborhood crime to perceptions of collective efficacy, as well as the suggestive evidence from cross-sectional studies, there is clearly a strong need for longitudinal research to determine whether the collective efficacy and crime relationship is robust. References Armstrong, Todd A., Charles M. Katz, and Stephen M. Schnebly. 2010. The Relationship Between Citizen Perceptions of Collective Efficacy and Neighborhood Violent Crime. Crime & Delinquency. Bandura, Albert. 1982. Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist 37 (2):122-147. ———. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Edited by A. Bandura, Series in Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ———. 2000. Exercise of Human Agency through Collective Efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science 9 (3):75-78. Bellair, Paul E. 2000. Informal Surveillance and Street Crime: A Complex Relationship. Criminology 38 (1):137-167. Bernasco, Wim, and Richard L. Block. 2009. Where Offenders Choose to Attack: A Discrete Choice Model of Robberies in Chicago. Criminology 47 (1):93-130. Browning, C. R., T. Leventhal, and J. Brooks-Gunn. 2005. Sexual initiation in early adolescence: The nexus of parental and community control. American Sociological Review 70 (5):758- Browning, Christopher R. 2002. The span of collective efficacy: Extending social disorganization theory to partner violence. Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (4):833- ———. 2009. Illuminating the Downside of Social Capital. American Behavioral Scientist 52 (11):1556-1578. 15 Browning, Christopher R., Lori A. Burrington, Tama Leventhal, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. 2008. Neighborhood Structural Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and Sexual Risk Behavior among Urban Youth. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 49 (3):269-285. Browning, Christopher R., and Kathleen A. Cagney. 2002. Neighborhood Structural Disadvantage, Collective Efficacy, and Self-Rated Physical Health in an Urban Setting. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43 (4):383-399. Browning, Christopher R., Seth L. Feinberg, and Robert D. Dietz. 2004. The Paradox of Social Organization: Networks, Collective Efficacy, and Violent Crime in Urban Neighborhoods. Social Forces 83 (2):503-534. Browning, Christopher R., Danielle Wallace, Seth L. Feinberg, and Kathleen A. Cagney. 2006. Neighborhood social processes, physical conditions, and disaster-related mortality: The case of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. American Sociological Review 71 (4):661-678. Burchfield, Keri B. 2009. Attachment as a source of informal social control in urban neighborhoods. Journal of Criminal Justice 37 (1):45-54. Burchfield, Keri B., and Eric Silver. 2013. Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox. Sociological Inquiry 83 (1):154- Bursik, Robert J. 1999. The Informal Control of Crime through Neighborhood Networks. Sociological Focus 32 (1):85-97. Coulton, C. J., M. Z. Jennings, and T. Chan. 2013. How Big is My Neighborhood? Individual and Contextual Effects on Perceptions of Neighborhood Scale. American Journal of Community Psychology 51 (1-2):140-150. Duncan, Terry E., Susan C. Duncan, Hayrettin Okut, Lisa A. Strycker, and Hollie Hix-Small. 2003. A Multilevel Contextual Model of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy. American Journal of Community Psychology 32 (3-4):245-252. Erickson, Patricia G., Lana Harrison, Steven Cook, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, and Edward M. Adlaf. 2012. A comparative study of the influence of collective efficacy on substance use among adolescent students in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal. Addiction Research & Theory 20 (1):11-20. Garcia, R. Marie, Ralph B. Taylor, and Brian A. Lawton. 2007. Impacts of Violent Crime and Neighborhood Structure on Trusting Your Neighbors. Justice Quarterly 24 (4):679-704. Gibson, Chris L, Christopher J Sullivan, Shayne Jones, and Alex R Piquero. 2010. 'Does It Take a Village?' Assessing Neighborhood Influences on Children's Self-Control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 47 (1):31-62. Hampton, Keith. 2008. Glocalization: Internet Use and Collective Efficacy. Unpublished Manuscript:36. Hipp, John R., Carter T. Butts, Ryan M. Acton, Nicholas N. Nagle, and Adam Boessen. 2013. Extrapolative Simulation of Neighborhood Networks based on Population Spatial Distribution: Do they Predict Crime? Social Networks 35 (4):614-625. Horne, Christine. 2004. Collective Benefits, Exchange Interests, and Norm Enforcement. Social Forces 82 (3):1037-1062. Kasarda, John D., and Morris Janowitz. 1974. Community Attachment in Mass Society. American Sociological Review 39 (3):328-339. Kirk, David S. 2009. Unraveling the Contextual Effects on Student Suspension and Juvenile Arrest: The Independent and Interdependent Influences of School, Neighborhood, and Family Social Controls. Criminology 47 (2):479-520. 16 Kirk, David S., and Mauri Matsuda. 2011. Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest. Criminology 49 (2):443-472. Mazerolle, Lorraine, Rebecca Wickes, and James McBroom. 2010. Community Variations in Violence: The Role of Social Ties and Collective Efficacy in Comparative Context. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 47 (1):3-30. Morenoff, Jeffrey D., Robert J. Sampson, and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2001. Neighborhood Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and the Spatial Dynamics of Urban Violence. Criminology 39 (3):517-559. Odgers, Candice L., Terrie E. Moffitt, Laura M. Tach, Robert J. Sampson, Alan Taylor, Charlotte L. Matthews, and Avshalom Caspi. 2009. The Protective Effects of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy on British Children Growing Up in Deprivation: A Developmental Analysis. Developmental Psychology 45 (4):942-957. Portes, Alejandro. 1998. Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1):1-24. Rankin, Bruce H., and James M. Quane. 2002. Social Contexts and Urban Adolescent Outcomes: The Interrelated Effects of Neighborhoods, Families, and Peers on African-American Youth. Social Problems 49 (1):79-100. Reisig, Michael D., and Jeffrey Michael Cancino. 2004. Incivilities in Nonmetropolitan Communities: The Effects of Structural Constraints, Social Conditions, and Crime. Journal of Criminal Justice 32 (1):15-29. Rhineberger-Dunn, Gayle M., and Susan M. Carlson. 2011. An Analysis of the Mediating Effects of Social Relations and Controls on Neighborhood Crime Victimization. Western Criminology Review 12 (1):15-34. Sampson, Robert J. 2006. Collective Efficacy Theory: Lessons Learned and Directions for Future Inquiry. In Taking Stock: The Status of Criminological Theory, edited by F. T. Cullen, J. P. Wright and K. R. Blevins. New Brunswick: Transaction. ———. 2006. How Does Community Context Matter? Social Mechanisms, and the Explanation of Crime Rates. In The Explanation of Crime: Context, Mechanisms, and Development, edited by P.-O. H. Wikstrom and R. J. Sampson. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago. Sampson, Robert J., Doug McAdam, Heather MacIndoe, and Simon Weffer-Elizondo. 2006. Civil Society Reconsidered: The Durable Nature and Community Organizational Context of Collective Civic Action. American Journal of Sociology 111 (3):673-714. Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2005. Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence. American Journal of Public Health 95 (2):224- Sampson, Robert J., and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 1999. Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods. American Journal of Sociology 105 (3):603-651. Sampson, Robert J., Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science 277 (August 15):918- Sampson, Robert J., and Per-Olof H. Wikstrom. 2008. The Social Order of Violence in Chicago and Stockholm Neighborhoods: A Comparative Inquiry. In Order, Conflict, and 17 Violence, edited by S. N. Kalyvas, I. Shapiro and T. Masoud. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Schreck, Christopher J, Jean Marie McGloin, and David S. Kirk. 2009. On the Origins of the Violent Neighborhood: A Study of the Nature and Predictors of Crime-Type Differentiation across Chicago Neighborhoods. Justice Quarterly 26 (4):7710794. Sharkey, Patrick T. 2006. Navigating dangerous streets: The sources and consequences of street efficacy. American Sociological Review 71 (5):826-846. Silver, Eric, and Lisa L. Miller. 2004. Sources of Informal Social Control in Chicago Neighborhoods. Criminology 42 (3):551-584. Simons, Ronald L., Leslie Gordon Simons, Callie Harbin Burt, Gene H. Brody, and Carolyn Cutrona. 2005. Collective Efficacy, Authoritative Parenting and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of a Model Integrating Community- and Family-Level Processes. Criminology 43 (4):989-1029. St. Jean, Peter K.B. 2007. Pockets of Crime: Broken Windows, Collective Efficacy, and the Criminal Point of View. Chicago: University of Chicago. Steenbeek, Wouter, and John R. Hipp. 2011. A Longitudinal Test of Social Disorganization Theory: Feedback Effects among Cohesion, Social Control and Disorder. Criminology 49 (3):833-871. Warner, Barbara D. 2007. Directly Intervene or Call the Authorities? A Study of Forms of Neighborhood Social Control Within a Social Disorganization Framework. Criminology 45 (1):99. Weisburd, David, Elizabeth Groff, and Sue-Ming Yang. 2012. The Criminology of Place. New York: Oxford. Wickes, Rebecca, John R. Hipp, Elise Sargeant, and Ross Homel. 2013. Collective efficacy as a task specific process: Examining the relationship between social ties, neighborhood cohesion and the capacity to respond to violence, delinquency and civic problems. American Journal of Community Psychology 52 (1-2):115-127. Wickes, Rebecca, John R. Hipp, Elise Sargeant, and Lorraine Mazerolle. 2012. Social Ties, Collective Efficacy and Actions: What Influences Informal Social Control Behaviors? Under review. Wickes, Rebecca L. 2010. Generating Action and Responding to Local Issues Collective Efficacy in Context. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 43 (3):423- Williams, Kirk R., and Nancy G. Guerra. 2011. Perceptions of Collective Efficacy and Bullying Perpetration in Schools. Social Problems 58 (1):126-143. Wright, Emily M., and Michael L. Benson. 2011. Clarifying the Effects of Neighborhood Context on Violence 'Behind Closed Doors'. JQ: Justice Quarterly 28 (5):775-798. Zaccaro, Stephen J., Virginia Blair, Christopher Peterson, and Michelle Zazanis. 1995. Collective Efficacy. In Self-efficacy, Adaptation, and Adjustment: Theory, Research, and Application, edited by J. E. Maddux. New York: Plenum. Zhang, Lening, Steven F. Messner, and Jianhong Liu. 2007. A Multilevel Analysis of the Risk of Household Burglary in the City of Tianjin, China. British Journal of Criminology 47 (6):918-937. Zhang, Lening, Steven F. Messner, Jianhong Liu, and Yue Angela Zhuo. 2002. Guanxi and Fear of Crime in Contemporary Urban China. British Journal of Criminology 49 (4):472-490. 18 Zimmerman, Gregory. 2010. Impulsivity, Offending, and the Neighborhood: Investigating the Person–Context Nexus. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 26 (3):301-332.

Published: Jan 1, 2015

There are no references for this article.