Fear of crime may develop in response to crime specifically (the narrowpathway) or may be a projection of broader threats (the broad pathway). Newapproaches are needed to examine how crime and threat, independently and in com-bination, influence people’s fear. To address this need, we created, evaluated, andvalidated an image set that varied across the dimensions of threat and crime.MethodWe used a 2 (Threat: high vs. low) × 2 (Crime: high vs. low) within-subjectsfactorial design. In three studies, participants (N= 24, 29, and 176, respectively) gavethreat, crime, and fear ratings towards images. Participants also completed two tradi-tional fear of crime measures and a measure of anxiety. Two evaluation studiesexplored the suitability of 178 images to produce a final set of 80 images (20 in eachof the four categories). We validated this final set of 80 images in a third study.ResultsThe validated Crime and Threat Image Set (CaTIS) contains 78 images acrossfour categories: threat-and-crime (high-crime, high-threat), threat-only (low-crime,high-threat), crime-only (high-crime, low-threat), and neutral (low-crime, low-threat).There were significant main effects of threat and crime, and an interaction betweenThreat × Crime, on participants’fear ratings. Participants’own ratings of threat—butnot crime—had a strong relationship with their fear ratings.ConclusionsThreat had a stronger influence on participants’fear ratings than crime.Thus, what is typically referred to as fear of crime may reflect broader fear. Furtherresearch with the CaTIS could explore the expression of this

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• The Crime and Threat Image Set (CaTIS): a validatedstimulus set to experimentally explore fear of cri