Appropriate police response to domestic violence: Comparing perceptions of Chinese and American college students

While domestic violence has emerged as a global concern since the 1970s, empirical research on public preferences for police response to domestic violence is lacking. Even rarer is investigating the issue from an international, comparative perspective. Using survey data collected from more than one thousand college students in two Chinese and two U.S. cities, this study compared Chinese and American citizens’ attitudes toward traditional and proactive police response to domestic violence and tested the effects of demographic characteristics, attitudes toward violence and gender roles, personal experiences with domestic violence, and locality on such attitudes. Chinese students were found to be more likely than American students to favor traditional response and less likely to support proactive response. Chinese and American students’ attitudes toward police response to domestic violence were influenced by both different and common factors. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.