A Study on the Relationship between Police Legitimacy and Police use of Force: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of the Obligation to Comply with the law

This study was designed to verify two things. The first is to verify the relationship between citizens' perception of police legitimacy and acceptance of police use of force. The second is to verify the mediating effect of the sense of obligation to comply with the law in the relationship between police legitimacy and police use of force. To achieve the research objectives, an online survey was conducted on 539 Seoul citizens. After that, the analysis was performed using the SPSS 27.0 program and the Model 4 analysis method of the Macro Process Model 4.2. As a result, it was confirmed that the increase in citizens' perception of police legitimacy leads to an increase in citizens' perception of the legitimacy of exercising police physical power. Specifically, multidimensional police legitimacy, procedural fairness, police effectiveness, distributive fairness, and legality all had a significant and positive effect on the recognition of the legitimacy of the exercise of police physical power. However, the mediating effect of the sense of legal compliance obligation could be confirmed only in one of the sub-factors of multidimensional police legitimacy. Based on the research results, a plan to raise the awareness of police legitimacy and police physical power was suggested.