Doctoral thesis of Philosophy: A cognitive behavioral perspective of drivers of threat of victimization involving local and international tertiary students

This thesis provides a first step towards understanding how fear of crime, perceived risk, perceptions of unsafety, and avoidance behavior reciprocally and positively influence each other; and how personal characteristics and community-related factors influence threat of victimization within a nonrecursive frame of reference, laying the groundwork and advancing conceptual foundations upon which threat of victimization can be assessed. By comparing international and local students, the current thesis makes a clarion call to researchers and practitioners to pay increasing attention to investigate the disposition of international students’ threat of victimization from different perspectives, including academia, practice, public policy, and universities.