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The Significance of Instrumental Pathways to Legitimacy and Public Support for Policing in South Korea: Is the Role of Procedural Fairness Too Small?

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Abstract

This study tests whether Tyler’s process-based model can be generalized to South Korea. It examines whether procedural fairness has a greater effect on the public’s perception of police legitimacy, compared to instrumental judgements about police behaviour. It also investigates the direct and indirect effects of procedural and instrumental judgements on the public’s compliance with the law and cooperation with the police. Using data drawn from a national survey of 1018 South Korean adults, our results find that procedural fairness, police effectiveness of maintaining law and order, and deterrence are significant factors contributing to police legitimacy, and that police effectiveness has the greatest impact when using a full model. Legitimacy fully mediates the link between procedural fairness and acts of compliance and cooperation, and it partially mediates the link between police effectiveness and the public’s cooperation with police, as well as the link between deterrence and compliance and cooperation. We found that procedural fairness has less influence on legitimacy than police effectiveness and deterrence, and does not play a significant role in directly explaining citizens’ compliance with the law and cooperation with police. We discuss why citizens comply with the law and cooperate with the police in around the globe and specifically in South Korea, providing evidence for a mix of normative and instrumental factors. Our findings differ from previous findings that emphasize either of those two factors.

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Notes

  1. CFI and TLI acceptable thresholds > .95 great; > .90 traditional; > .80 sometimes permissible; RMSEA acceptable thresholds < .05 good; .05–.10 moderate; > .10 bad.

  2. According to Brown (2006: 131), ‘a factor correlation that exceeds 0.80 or 0.85 is often used as the criterion to define poor discriminant validity.’

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Author notes

  1. Both Yung Hyeock Lee and Sujung Cho contributed equally and are co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Police Science, KonKuk University, 268 ChunWon-DaeRo, ChungJu-Si, ChungCheongBuk-Do, 380-701, South Korea

    Yung Hyeock Lee

  2. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

    Sujung Cho

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  1. Yung Hyeock Lee
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Lee, Y.H., Cho, S. The Significance of Instrumental Pathways to Legitimacy and Public Support for Policing in South Korea: Is the Role of Procedural Fairness Too Small?. Crime Law Soc Change 73, 575–603 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-019-09876-z

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