Focal Visual Attention in Crime Decision Making: Behavioral Insights from Immersive 360° Video Eye-Tracking

As crimes unfold, how is situational information channeled into decisions? Methodological tools capable of answering this question can advance criminological theory and research. This preregistered study introduces Focal Visual Attention (FVA) as a decision-making construct for measuring visual information processing during realistic, dynamic crime-related scenarios. We recruited 262 German-speaking male participants who viewed two 5-minute immersive 360° videos depicting a personal provocation and a witnessed sexual harassment incident in a bar from a point-of-view perspective. Eye-tracking recorded ~ 4.35 million gaze points. Post hoc, mean-shift clustering, an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm, identified regions of interest (ROIs). Fixations within these ROIs served as proxies for FVA. Linear mixed-effects models examined temporal changes in FVA and associations with individual characteristics. Overall, visual attention to conflict-relevant stimuli increased over time, with additional avoidance fixations toward exits. Participants with histories of violence and/or prior police involvement showed distinct attention patterns. FVA also varied with self-reported emotions, cognitive appraisals of risk and benefit, and intentions to respond aggressively. FVA provides a robust, quantifiable measure of moment-to-moment visual attention in crime and analogous decision making. Methodologically, this study demonstrates a scalable framework for analyzing high-density eye-tracking data using immersive 360° video and unsupervised machine learning. Substantively, the findings extend our understanding of crime decision making with potential to inform research in policing, situational crime prevention, and fear-of-crime.