Reactive guardianship: Who intervenes? How? And why?
Guardianship is a core tenet of routine activity theory and collective efficacy. At its outset, routine activity research assumed that the mere presence of a guardian was sufficient to disrupt many forms of crime. More recent research, however, has taken as a starting point that would-be-guardians m...
| Authors: | ; ; ; ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2024
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| In: |
Criminology
Year: 2024, Volume: 62, Issue: 3, Pages: 587-618 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Guardianship is a core tenet of routine activity theory and collective efficacy. At its outset, routine activity research assumed that the mere presence of a guardian was sufficient to disrupt many forms of crime. More recent research, however, has taken as a starting point that would-be-guardians must take on an active role for a reduction in crime to occur. Integrating research on bystander intervention and guardianship-in-action, the current study elaborates the individual-level motivations and decision processes of guardianship to answer the following questions: Who serves as a reactive guardian? How do they do so? And why? We tasked young adults (N = 1,032) included in the recent waves of the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso) to assess a 70-second video depicting a sexual harassment event. We examined participants’ willingness to engage in a range of intervention options as a function of their prosocial attitudes, safety considerations, socioemotional motivations, and moral considerations. Results show a complex decision process leading to whether and how a would-be guardian decides to intervene to disrupt sexual harassment, such that prosocial motivations and emotional reactions are weighed against perceptions of danger when deciding on a specific course of action. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-9125 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1745-9125.12380 |