Legitimacy invariance and campus crime: the impact of campus police legitimacy in different reporting contexts

This paper examines whether campus police legitimacy relevance varies across different crime contexts. 519 respondents from 31 undergraduate sections at a public university rated campus police legitimacy as well as their willingness to report a campus crime to the public safety department. Students were assigned to different crime vignettes, involving experimental manipulation of crime type: petty theft, indecent exposure, aggravated assault, and gun possession on a college campus. Results indicate general support for the procedural justice model, specifically the invariance of the influence of legitimacy on reporting. This paper argues for increased specificity in measurement of cooperation beyond general willingness to assist, or a single crime context.