Assessing a multidimensional model of police legitimacy in South Korea with latent class analysis

ABSTRACT

There are few validated scales for police legitimacy, and the ambiguous dimensionality of legitimacy raises a serious issue. This study tests a multidimensional scale of legitimacy, drawing upon the police legitimacy model. To identify a certain number of classes with a similar pattern of hypothesized legitimacy among a nationally representative sample of South Korean adults, we employed latent class analysis that legitimacy researchers have yet to consider. The current study found that police legitimacy was constituted with the four sub-dimensions of lawfulness, procedural fairness, police effectiveness, and equitable distribution of police sanctions. South Korean adults within the four multidimensional legitimacy scales were separated into three clusters: the legal procedure-oriented group (41.6%), the equitable sanction-oriented group (20.8%), and the cynic-oriented group (37.6%). The odds of self-reported complying with police requests and cooperating with the police were higher among members in both the legal procedure-oriented and equitable sanction-oriented groups compared to those in the cynic-oriented group. Finally, the four multidimensional legitimacy scales had a direct effect on both self-reported compliance and cooperation and had a mediating effect on the relationship between obligation to obey and both outcome variables. We conclude that police in South Korea should enhance the four multidimensions of legitimacy during each encounter with the public.

KEYWORDS:

• Police legitimacy
• multidimensional model
• compliance with police requests
• cooperation with the police
• latent class analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Despite the fact that constructs, conceptualized as multidimensional will require more items, for some constructs (e.g., lawfulness and police effectiveness) that are narrowly defined, recent research suggests that one single-item measures may suffice (Bergkvist and Rossiter 2007; Drolet and Morrison 2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yung Hyeock Lee

Yung Hyeock Lee is a professor in the Department of Police Science, KonKuk University in South Korea. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. His research and publications focus on policing and comparative criminology. Before he joined KonKuk University, he held the position of assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Toledo in Ohio and associate professor in Korea National Police University. Some of his recent articles appear in Justice System Journal, Crime, Law and Social Change, and Children and Youth Services Review. He has been interviewed on television, in newspapers and in other mass media outlets more than 4,900 times regarding various issues of crime and justice policies in South Korea.

Sujung Cho

Sujung Cho is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in U.S. Her research areas include school and youth victimization, juvenile delinquency, and cross-cultural comparisons of victimization. She is currently involved in a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of the odds of bullying victimization among junior high and high school students in South Korea.