Job activities and personal crime victimization: Implications for theory

Theoreticians have used the concepts of lifestyle and routine activities to account for the occurrence of personal crime victimization. Research has not usually used direct measures of these concepts, however, instead relying on demographic variables such as age and sex as proxy indicators. This paper analyzes the relationship of various job activities (delivering passengers or goods, traveling out of town, dealing face-to-face with customers, and working irregular hours) to the risk of violent and theft-damage personal crime victimization, and to the risk of such victimization at work. Logistic regression models show that delivery of passengers or goods and dealing with the public are robustly associated with violent victimization. None of the four job activities are consistently associated with theft-damage victimization risk. The results illustrate the importance of using direct measures of life-style or routine activities to examine exposure to the risk of victimization. The findings also suggest the need to elaborate further the notion of exposure, and to develop a second generation of victimization theory.