Obeying the Rules of the Road: Procedural Justice, Social Identity and Normative Compliance

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Jonathan Jackson is a professor of research methodology at the London School of Economics and a member of the LSE's Mannheim Centre for Criminology. Permanent repository link Sarah MacQueen is a Research Fellow with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research based at the University of Edinburgh Law School Word count (including abstract, footnotes, references, tables): 8,981Abstract Why do people comply with traffic laws and regulations? Road traffic policing tends to be premised on the idea that people comply when they are presented with a credible risk of sanction in the event of non-compliance. Such an instrumental model of compliance contrasts with the normative account offered by procedural justice theory, in which compliance is encouraged by legitimate legal authorities. Comparing these two accounts, we find evidence that both instrumental and normative factors explain variance in motorists' self-reported propensity to offend. Extending the standard procedural justice account, we also find that it is social identitynot legitimacy -that forms the 'bridge' linking procedural fairness and compliance, at least according to a definition of legitimacy that combines felt obligation and moral endorsement. Fair treatment at the hands of police officers seems to enhance identification with the social group the police represent, and in turn, identification seems to motivate adherence to rules (laws) governing social behavior. These findings have implications not only for understandings of legal compliance, but also our understanding of why procedural justice motivates compliance, and the role of procedural justice in promoting social cohesion.

Legitimating Practices: Revisiting the Predicates of Police Legitimacy

“…Our framing is consistent with previous UK-based research (e.g. Jackson et al, 2012a;Bradford et al, 2015aBradford et al, , 2015b. But importantly, no earlier study has tested a similarly broad array of policing elements.…”

Law Awareness and Compliance toward Traffic Violations in Makassar City, Indonesia

“…Also, legitimate legal authorities encourage legal compliance. [10] Also, legal compliance is also closely related to the apparatus. The police should be able to interact with the community.…”

On the Dual Motivational Force of Legitimate Authority

“…The second is that procedural justice enhances one's identification with the group that authority represents (here conceptualized as the law-abiding member of the Scottish community, cf. Bradford et al, 2014aBradford et al, , 2015, motivating one to act in ways that allow people to maintain positive social bonds (Tyler & Blader, 2003;Blader & Tyler, 2009).…”

“…Bradford et al (2015) combined duty to obey and normative alignment sub-scales of legitimacy into one index (justified by the strong association between the two sub-scales and the desire to avoid multi-collinearity issues).…”

“…By way of contribution, the ScotCet trial (MacQueen & Bradford, 2014;Bradford et al, 2015) was a RCT designed to test procedurally just road policing. In the control group, police officers operated 'as normal,' stopping cars as part of routine vehicle safety checks (and breathalysing for alcohol if the officer deemed necessary).…”