Reported compliance in police-civilian encounters: The roles of accommodation and trust in Zimbabwe and the United States

Abstract Recent research has demonstrated that, for young adults, officers’ accommodative practices are potent predictors of civilians’ attributed trust in the police, and their perceived likelihood of compliance with police requests. The present study continued this line of work in the African nation of Zimbabwe and in the United States. Besides differences between nations, results revealed that for US participants, officer accommodativeness indirectly predicted civilian compliance through trust. For those in Zimbabwe, however, only direct relationships were found – between officer accommodation and civilian trust, and between accommodation and compliance. The theoretical and practical significance of these are discussed.