Public trust in the police in Taiwan: A test of instrumental and expressive models
| Author | Yao-chung (Lennon) Chang,Ivan Y Sun,Susyan Jou,Charles C Hou |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865813489306 |
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2014, Vol. 47(1) 123–140
!The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865813489306
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Article
Public trust in the police
in Taiwan: A test of
instrumental and expressive
models
Ivan Y Sun
University of Delaware, USA
Susyan Jou
National Taipei University, Taiwan
Charles C Hou
National Taipei University, Taiwan
Yao-chung (Lennon) Chang
City University of Hong Kong
Abstract
Although public assessments of the police have become the focal concern of a substantial
amount of research efforts since the 1970s, a very small number of studies have analysed
public opinions on the Taiwan police. Using survey data collected from three cities and two
counties in 2010, this study expands the existing literature by assessing whether Taiwan
residents’ perceptions are distinguishable in terms of procedural-based trust and outcome-
based trust and whether both the instrumental and expressive models are predictive of
Taiwanese trust in the police. Findings revealed that the Taiwanese tended to conflate pro-
cedural-based and outcome-based trust. Both the instrumental model (concerns about
safety) and the expressive model (trust in neighbours and perceived quality of life) were
significantly linked to Taiwanese trust in the police. Satisfaction with government performance
and media influence were also predictive of police trustworthiness. Directions for future
research and policy are discussed.
Keywords
expressive model, instrumental model, procedural-based trust, Taiwan police, trust in the
police
Corresponding author:
Ivan Y Sun, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
Email: isun@udel.edu
Introduction
Public assessments of the police have become the focal concern of a substantial amount
of research efforts since the 1970s. This line of inquiry is pivotal in establishing theor-
etical explanations of policing in general and public opinions on the police in particular.
Citizen evaluations of the police also represent a critical issue for police administrators
during the information technology era as locality-based crime prevention and fighting
strategies and tactics become essential in performing a new model of policing that is
mainly driven by data and technology (Rosenbaum, 2007). In this sense, understanding
citizens’ attitudes towards the police represents key information for police managers to
improve public participation in crime prevention programs and police–community
relations.
The primary purpose of this study is to assess public trust in the police in Taiwan.
Despite the importance of the topic, only a handful of studies have assessed factors that
influence public attitudes towards the Taiwan police (Cao and Dai, 2006; Lai et al., 2010;
Wu et al., 2012). Although a larger number of research reports have been published in
Chinese, a general limitation of this line of studies is that they have tended to be descrip-
tive in nature, elucidating the general patterns and trends of public opinions without
much investigation into their causal mechanisms (see e.g. Huang, 2006; Yang et al.,
2010). Indeed, past research has rarely tested the explanatory power of variables
along theoretical frameworks, greatly reducing its potential contribution to theory con-
struction and elaboration.
This study specifically addresses two concerns about the existing literature in public
assessments of the Taiwanese police. First, recent research has acknowledged the com-
plexity and multidimensional character of public attitudes towards the police in both
Western and Chinese societies (e.g. Jackson et al., 2011; Stoutland, 2001; Sun et al.,
2012). Trust in the police, for instance, can be delineated along two dimensions, proce-
dural-based trust and outcome-based trust (Tyler, 2006; Tyler and Huo, 2002).
Nevertheless, studies on public assessments of the Taiwan police have remained nar-
rowly focused, with a single-item indicator reflecting trust (Wu et al., 2012) or confidence
(Cao and Dai, 2006; Lai et al., 2010) in the police. This is problematic as single-indicator
measures are prone to generating simplistic and even misleading assessments of social
phenomena (Hudson and Kuhner, 2010). This study employs multiple items to measure
trust in the police and examines whether these items can be distinguished along two
conceptual aspects, procedural-based trust and outcome-based trust.
Second, recent studies, especially these conducted in the United Kingdom, have made
conceptual and analytical distinctions between the instrumental model and expressive
model of public trust in the police, with the former emphasizing the police’s responsi-
bility for curbing crime and maintaining safety while the latter stresses their roles in
upholding community values and promoting informal social control (Jackson and
Bradford, 2010; Jackson and Sunshine, 2007). Such theoretical elaborations have yet
to be explicitly tested using data from non-Western societies. By following the concep-
tualization and operationalization of these explanatory models of trust in the police in
the Western literature, this study can expound to what extent theoretical frameworks
and key concepts developed in highly industrialized, stable countries can be applied to
transitional societies, such as Taiwan.
124 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 47(1)
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