The impact of political entity on confidence in legal authorities: A comparison between China and Taiwan

One country, three populations: Trust in police among migrants, villagers, and urbanites in China

“…Both being exposed to negative reports about the police and believing in such reports, particularly among urbanites, significantly reduced perceived trustworthiness of the police. Despite its importance, the media's role in influencing public assessments of the police has rarely been empirically investigated in China (Lai et al, 2010). Findings of this study thus provide some preliminary evidence to support such a linkage and are in tune with results from an established line of research that shows the impact of the media on public attitudes toward the police in Western societies (e.g., Calanan and Rosenberger, 2011;Chermak et al, 2006).…”

“…1 These conceptual and methodological advancements found in the literature examining trust in the police among Western samples have been largely overlooked by recent research on assessments of trust in the police using samples from China, which remains narrowly focused with a single-item indicator of trust or confidence in the police. While previous studies fail to take into consideration the possible multi-dimensions associated with police trustworthiness, their findings reveal a highly favorable rating of trust or confidence in the Chinese police, ranging from roughly 67% to 86% (see Lai et al, 2010;Wu et al, 2012;Wu and Sun, 2009). One of the exceptions of this line of investigation is Michelson and Read's (2011) study of public perceptions of legal authorities in Beijing and rural China, which found that Chinese citizens tended to conflate procedural justice and outcome justice in their assessments of the police.…”

“…Although the barriers that exist to conducting research in China have been long and widely acknowledged (e.g., Cohen, 1970;Liang and Lu, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007), the past two decades have witnessed the burgeoning of research concerning law, crime, and justice in China. Directly pertinent to this current study is a line of investigation of public assessments of the Chinese police (Cao and Hou, 2001;Jiang et al, 2012;Lai et al, 2010;Michelson and Read, 2011;Sun et al, , 2013Wu et al, 2012;Sun 2009, 2010). Albeit still small in number, these studies have offered valuable baseline information about the general patterns of public attitudes toward the police and, to a lesser extent, assessed factors influencing such evaluations along theoretical frameworks.…”

“…Trust in the police, for example, can be conceptually delineated along several aspects, such as priorities, respectfulness, dependability, and competency (Stoutland, 2001). Yet, previous research on Chinese trust in the police has relied predominately on a single item to measure trust Wu et al, 2012;Wu and Sun, 2009) or confidence (Cao and Hou, 2001;Lai et al, 2010). Single-item indicators are not only inadequate in capturing the complexity of public perceptions of the police, but are also prone to generate misleading assessments of social phenomena (Hudson and Kuhner, 2010).…”

Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource governance

“…Trustworthiness is determined by public perceptions of the performance and competence of the governing body. Trust therefore reflects the degree of confidence and goodwill directed toward governing institutions (Lai et al 2010) and the information they share with stakeholders (Gilmour et al 2015). Trust has also proven to be vital for eliciting compliance in settings as diverse as the workplace (Kim and Mauborgne 1993), community-based management and comanagement of natural resources (Pretty 2003, Armitage et al 2009), and tax compliance (Scholz and Lubell 1998).…”