Attachment as a source of informal social control in urban neighborhoods

Studies had suggested that informal social control is key to understanding neighborhood crime rates. Yet little is known about sources of informal social control in urban neighborhoods, and less is known about the role of neighborhood attachment in fostering informal social control. To fill this gap, this study addressed three questions: (1) Does neighborhood attachment, operationalized as a multidimensional construct, contribute to neighborhood levels of informal social control? (2) Does neighborhood attachment help explain the lower levels of informal social control typically observed in structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods? (3) If so, what dimensions of neighborhood attachment are most important and how? Using multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results indicated that systemic ties and attitudinal attachment were positively associated with neighborhood levels of informal social control, and that these dimensions of neighborhood attachment explained some of the associations between neighborhood structural conditions and informal social control.