Social Justice and Public Cooperation Intention: Mediating Role of Political Trust and Moderating Effect of Outcome Dependence

Cooperation is vital to human evolution and the development of society. In addition, social justice is one of humanity’s long pursuits. Based on social exchange theory and system justification theory, we built and tested a comprehensive mediated moderation model of the relationship between social justice and public cooperation intention via the mediation of political trust and with the moderation of outcome dependence. This research consisted of two studies using laboratory experiment (N = 320) and field survey (N = 1240) methods. Data were collected from participants located in China. The results showed that (1) both competence-based trust and motive-based trust mediated the relationship between social justice (i.e., distributive justice and procedural justice) and public cooperation intention; (2) outcome dependence moderated the relationship between social justice and public cooperation intention; and (3) the moderation of outcome dependence functioned through the mediating effect of competence-based and motive-based trust. The theoretical and practical significance of these findings is discussed.