The Impact of Media on Public Trust in Legal Authorities in China and Taiwan

A Review of Taiwanese Trust in the Police with Alternative Interpretations

“…The correlation between income level and perceptions of the police, however, is not significant in prior studies conducted in Taiwan (Lai, 2016;Sun et al, 2016;Wang & Sun, 2018). Additionally, the correlation between education attainment and perceptions of the police is largely insignificant in Taiwan Sun et al, 2016;Wu, 2014). Age is a consistent predictor that positively correlated with favorable attitudes toward the police in the Western societies (Brown & Benedict, 2002;Decker, 1981;Reisig & Parks, 2000), and youth usually have less trust in police than seniors, as younger individuals more often perceive police officers as law enforcers who place restrictions.…”

“…Studies conducted in the American and European societies focus on social construct of trust in police with multiple dimensions (Hawdon, 2008;Jackson et al, 2011;Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). Some prior studies measuring trust in the police in Taiwan suffer from single question item regarding trust that somewhat leans toward psychological aspect (Wu, 2014;Wu et al, 2012) and deviate from the very nature of the police as a social institution and trust in the police is a social construct. Simply asking "do you trust the police?"…”

“…Also, recent empirical studies concerning trust in the police in Taiwan often limited by measuring the level of police trustworthiness using a singular dummy or ordinal variable (Sun et al, 2012;Wu, 2014;Wu et al, 2012); however, the theoretical construct of multi-faced trust of the police is strongly supported by empirical studies in the Western literature (Jackson et al, 2011;Stoutland, 2001;Tyler 1990). Furthermore, urbanization has structured urban Taiwanese' life styles and daily operating values close to modern Western societies, while the rural areas of Taiwan largely rely on agriculture and function in a more traditional fashion.…”

“…On the other hand, seniors in Taiwan usually have gone through White Terror or suffered directly/indirectly from 228 Incident, and they may distrust authorities in general. Among published survey analyses, age in general is not associated with citizens' favorable attitude toward the police in Taiwan Sun et al, 2016;Wu, 2014;Wang & Sun, 2018), however, respondents' life time experience with the police is not addressed. It is likely that the positive correlation between age and favorable attitudes toward the police cancels out the negative perceptions derived from injustice experience.…”

“…First, Taiwan is an island society that has experimented political transformation and successfully switched from authoritarianism to democracy (Cao et al, 2014), and such a case offers implications to other Chinese societies that either face enormous societal and economic changes (e.g., China) or political transitions (e.g., Hong Kong and Macau). Second, while recent studies have assessed public trust in the police in Taiwan Wu, 2014;Wu et al, 2012) or other Chinese societies (Wu & Sun, 2009;Wu et al, 2012), they often measured the level of police trustworthiness using a singular dummy or ordinal variable. In addition, only one recent empirical study on the Taiwan police addresses rural and urban difference (Wang & Sun, 2018), but, like many prior studies, the interpretation is lacking sufficient social-historical context, which is elaborated in this review.…”