The present study aims to examine crime seriousness perceptions by scrutinising their key components – perceived wrongfulness and harmfulness of crime. It also seeks to examine the extent to which these concepts are related to sociodemographic characteristics, conservation values, legal cynicism, religiosity, and exposure to media coverage of crime. A survey was administered to 408 residents in Portugal containing vignettes pertaining to two seriousness levels of both conventional and white-collar crime. The twenty resulting offence scenarios were grouped into four groups: heavier scenarios of conventional crimes, lighter scenarios of conventional crimes, heavier scenarios of white-collar crime, and lighter scenarios of white-collar crime. The results show that only legal cynicism has a consistent influence on crime wrongfulness perceptions for the four crime groups and some influence on crime harmfulness perceptions for lighter scenarios of conventional crimes. As for conservation values and religiosity, the only effects observed are on the perceived wrongfulness and perceived harmfulness of heavier scenarios of conventional crimes. Exposure to media coverage of crime does not seem to have an impact on the assessment of these two perceptual variables. Sociodemographic characteristics and victimization experiences explain only minor differences in the assessment of the seriousness, wrongfulness, and harmfulness of crimes.

本研究旨在通过仔细审查犯罪严重性的关键组成部分（感知的犯罪不法性和危害性）来检验对犯罪严重性的看法。它还试图研究这些概念与社会人口特征、保护价值观、法律犬儒主义、宗教信仰和媒体犯罪报道的接触程度。对葡萄牙 408 名居民进行了一项调查，其中包含与传统犯罪和白领犯罪两个严重程度有关的小插曲。由此产生的二十种犯罪场景被分为四组：较重的常规犯罪场景、较轻的常规犯罪场景、较重的白领犯罪场景和较轻的白领犯罪场景。结果表明，只有法律犬儒主义对四种犯罪群体的犯罪不法性感知具有一致的影响，并且对较轻的常规犯罪情景的犯罪危害性感知有一定影响。至于保护价值观和宗教信仰，观察到的唯一影响是对较严重的传统犯罪场景的不法性和有害性的感知。媒体对犯罪的报道似乎对这两个感知变量的评估没有影响。社会人口特征和受害经历只能解释对犯罪严重性、不法性和危害性评估的微小差异。