Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between subjective socioeconomic status (SES) of 508 Korean adults and their perception on justice (distributive and procedural justice for self and general others), and verified whether there is a moderating effect of age (20s versus 30s and over). A self-report survey on SES and perception on justice was conducted. Then, using the SPSS 27 and PROCESS Macro 4.0 program., a correlation analysis looking into the relationship among the study variables was performed along with the ANOVAs comparing the mean differences of study across age-groups to support the group division criteria. Next, a moderation analysis was conducted. The main results of this study are as follows. First, the participants’ SES showed a positive relationship with the sub-factors of justice perception and a negative relationship with age. Second, age had a inverse relationship on distributive justice for self and general others, and procedural justice for self, but significant relationship on procedural justice for general others. Third, when looking into the mean differences of the research variables according to age, the 20s had significantly different characteristics compared to the 30s and over, and there were no significant differences among the 30s and over group. Fourth, the moderating effect of age in the relationship between SES and perception of justice was positively significant in the case of distributive justice for self and procedural justice for general others. In the case of distributive justice for self, the positive slope of the graph in which SES predicts distributive fairness for self was steeper in the 30s and older group compared to the 20s. Regarding the procedural justice for general others, SES was not a significant predictor for the 20s. However, SES positively predicted procedural justice in the 30s and older. This study is meaningful in that it suggested age differences in their perceptions of justice by revealing the different relationships of SES and perception on justice according to age.