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The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the introduction of extra-ordinary restrictions to mitigate its spread. Authorities rely on the public's voluntary willingness to obey these restrictions, yet the intrusive nature of these measures may lead some people to believe that authorities are overstepping the limits of their rightful power (i.e. bounded-authority). This paper applies the bounded-authority framework to the COVID-19 context to understand the factors associated with the public's duty to obey authorities during COVID-19.

This paper utilizes survey data from 1,582 individuals to examine what factors drive COVID-19-related bounded-authority concerns, and in turn, how bounded-authority concerns may impact one's duty to obey authorities during COVID-19.

Results show that worry about freedom loss, opposition to surveillance tactics, police heavy-handedness and perceptions of procedural injustice from police during the pandemic all drive bounded-authority concerns. Findings also reveal that bounded-authority concerns are associated with reduced duty to obey and mediate the relationship between procedural justice and the duty to obey authorities' enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions.

Findings reveal new evidence about the bounded-authority framework and the public's duty to obey authorities, with implications for the COVID-19 context and beyond.

Since 9/11, Muslims have experienced discrimination and scrutiny from authorities. For many, this experience has damaged their trust in law enforcement and left them with the impression that they are viewed as suspect. This study seeks to better understand the relationship between Muslims' perceived police bias and trust, and how procedural justice may shape this relationship.

The authors collected survey data from 398 Muslims in Sydney, Australia, as part of a larger study on immigrants' views of police. Participants were surveyed on a range of topics including contact with police, global assessments of police procedural justice and how they believe police treat their cultural group.

Overall, the authors find that the extent to which people perceive police bias is associated with their level of trust in police. Greater preconceived bias is associated with lower trust in police. The authors also find that perceiving police as procedurally just is positively related to trust. Importantly, this study finds a significant interaction effect between perceptions of police bias and procedural justice on Muslims' trust in police. Specifically, for those who hold the view that police are unbiased, perceiving police as generally procedural just has a strong positive effect on trust. For those who view police as biased against Muslims, procedural justice has a weak but positive effect on trust. This interaction effect suggests that perceived bias may shape how Muslims interpret police treatment of Muslims.

This study is the first to explore how perceived police bias and perceptions of procedural justice predict and interact to shape Muslims' trust in police, advancing existing procedural justice policing scholarship.