A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Residents’ Trust in Police in Taiwan

Abstract

This study aims to examine residents’ attitude toward the police, with an empirical assessment of survey data collected from both urban and rural areas of Taiwan, a Chinese society that has successfully transformed from authoritarianism to democracy. Prior studies using samples from different Chinese societies tend to find that the assessment of the police is unidimensional. Using procedural justice as the guiding theoretical framework, the present study examines whether urban and rural residents express different levels of trust in police on procedural- and outcome-based measures. Findings revealed that urban residents had a lower level of trust in police on the outcome-based performance than their rural counterparts, while no difference was found in procedural-based dimension. In addition, Taiwanese attitudes toward the police were substantially influenced by media coverage of police misconducts and political ideology. This article concluded with discussions of plausible explanations and policy implications.