Abstract This study aims to explore whether and how public perceptions and attributions of police-involved crisis events influence trust in the police, and how such trust can be repaired. Utilizing a case-based survey conducted in the aftermath of the ‘Lei Yang case’, a police misconduct case, factor analysis was employed to identify public perception and attribution patterns, while multiple linear regression was applied to measure their influence. The results indicate that awareness of a single crisis event does not necessarily damage police trust; instead, the type of public attribution is critical. Specifically, internal attribution significantly undermines police trust, whereas external attribution does not. Both socioeconomic status and media usage patterns were found to influence public attribution tendencies. Overall, this study underscores the impact of public attributions on police trust and offers practical, attribution-based solutions for repairing trust and fostering positive police-public interactions.
Cheng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.