Territorial Functioning and Victimization in Neighbourhoods

Territorial functioning represents a collection of behaviors, markers, and attitudes expressed by people in small groups as a way to manage their environments and the spaces they physically occupy. This paper examines attitudes and marking behavior associated with territorial functioning by residents of two housing areas in Malaysia that differed in terms of land uses and in residents’ perceptions of the level of crime in their neighborhoods. In the study, 144 participants participated in a survey. They reported levels of crime similar to the ones reported in a British survey of crime in 2015. The data generated by the survey were then analyzed in SPSS using descriptive and structural equation modeling that combined the three elements of territorial functioning behavior, markers, and attitudes to create an overall measure of territorial function. The results of the analysis indicated that territorial functioning is negatively associated with the number of break-ins of homes in a neighborhood regardless of the type of neighborhood.