Navigating policy legitimacy: the distributive and procedural justice of road transport pricing schemes

Abstract A major question in politics concerns how the policymaking process shapes political legitimacy. Drawing from the distributive and procedural justice literature, we propose two explanatory factors influencing legitimacy: (1) the distributive policy impact (i.e. the extent to which policy losers show lower support), and (2) the inclusion of organized interests in the decision-making process (i.e. whether their involvement increases the acceptance of a decision outcome). In addition, we advance the existing legitimacy literature by theorizing how individuals, given their core preferences and their evaluation of a policy outcome, value alternative decision scenarios and policy outcomes. We test this framework through a survey experiment on the extent to which individuals support different road transport pricing schemes. Although our results give credit to the winner-loser model, they challenge a utilitarian perspective on legitimacy, as many individuals care about equity principles and the decision-making process, irrespective of specific policy outcomes.