The current dissertation examines police legitimacy in the South Korean context. Prior research has tended to focus on the relational aspects of police-citizen relationships and is generally suggestive of an important role for a variety of relational constructs. Although important, this work has tended to pay less attention to person-level constructs within individuals. Furthermore, prior police legitimacy research lacks examination of cultural values as well and only focuses on police-citizen encounters. Additionally, although recent studies regarding South Korean public perception of police legitimacy have been emerging, more extensive investigation is needed. The primary goal of the current study is to examine the impact of propensity to trust and Confucian values on perceived police legitimacy, operationalized here using the Integrated Framework of Legitimacy (Hamm et al, 2017). To this end, the current dissertation uses data collected from South Korean university students to contribute to the literature (1) an evaluation of the role of person-level constructs in predicting public perceptions of police legitimacy and (2) a first test of the IFL in the South Korean context.
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