Police Legitimacy and Compliance With the Law Among Chinese Youth

Abstract

The process-based model of policing garnered considerable support in the discourse on police legitimacy. However, findings are largely based on Western contexts, and little attention has been paid to the model advanced by Tyler that police legitimacy helps promote compliance. Using a high school sample ( N = 711) from China, we follow Tankebe's operationalization and examine the role of legitimacy in youth support for the police and whether legitimacy helps predict compliance with the law. Findings indicate that procedural justice and shared values are strong predictors of youth support to the police, and this support positively predicts compliance with the law. Distributive fairness exerts an independent effect on compliance while having been questioned by the police is negatively related to compliance.