Citizens’ illegal behaviour as a response to unsatisfactory street-level encounters: the causal relationship between procedural justice and vigilantism

How do procedural justice and service availability on the street-level affect citizens’ tendencies to act as vigilantes? Vigilantism is an illegal behaviour, and an undesirable phenomenon that could pose challenges to public management and have substantial consequences for these agencies. Using an experimental between-subjects design, we investigated the causal effect between procedural justice and service availability (rationing) on the street-level on citizens’ vigilantism. We explored our data using Structural Equation Modelling. Our findings strengthen the importance of street-level encounters, due to their influence not only on policy outcomes during such encounters, but also on what happens in between them.