Trust in Risk Management: A Model‐Based Review of Empirical Research

This review of studies of trust in risk management was designed, in part, to examine the relations between the reviewed research and the consensus model of trust that has recently emerged in other fields of study. The review begins by briefly elaborating the consensus views on the dimensionality and function of trust. It then describes the various models of trust that have been developed in the field of risk management, comparing them with the consensus approach. The findings of previous reviews are outlined, followed by a delineation of the open questions addressed by the present review, the method used, and the results. Finally, the findings of the review are discussed in relation to the important issue of trust asymmetry, the role of trust in risk management, and directions for future research. The consensus model specifies two conceptualizations of trust, each linked to particular types of antecedents. Relational trust, which is called trust in this review, is based on the relations between the trusting person and the other. Calculative trust, which is called confidence, is based on past behavior of the other and/or on constraints on future behavior. Results of this review showed that most studies of trust in risk management, while exploring matters of particular concern to the risk management community, were at least in part consistent with the consensus model. The review concludes by urging greater integration between the concerns of the former and the insights of the latter.     

Perceived Risk, Trust, and Democracy

Risk management has become increasingly politicized and contentious. Polarized views, controversy, and overt conflict have become pervasive. Risk-perception research has recently begun to provide a new perspective on this problem. Distrust in risk analysis and risk management plays a central role in this perspective. According to this view, the conflicts and controversies surrounding risk management are not due to public ignorance or irrationality but, instead, are seen as a side effect of our remarkable form of participatory democracy, amplified by powerful technological and social changes that systematically destroy trust. Recognizing the importance of trust and understanding the "dynamics of the system" that destroys trust has vast implications for how we approach risk management in the future.     

Marginal Trust in Risk Managers: Building and Losing Trust Following Decisions Under Uncertainty

Although a considerable amount of research has examined correlates of baseline public trust in risk managers, much less research has looked at marginal changes in public trust following specific events. Such research is important for identifying what kinds of events will lead to increases and decreases in public trust and thus for understanding how trust is built and lost. Using a taxonomy based upon signal detection theory (SDT), the current article presents two experimental studies examining marginal trust change following eight different types of events. Supporting predictions, cautious decisionmakers who accepted signs of danger (Hits and False Alarms) were more likely to be trusted than those who rejected them (All Clears and Misses). Moreover, transparency about an event was associated with higher levels of marginal trust than a lack of transparency in line with earlier findings. Contrary to predictions, however, trust was less affected by whether the decisions were correct (i.e., Hits and All Clears) or incorrect (i.e., False Alarms and Misses). This finding was primarily due to a "False Alarm Effect" whereby Open False Alarms led to positive increases in trust despite being incorrect assessments of risk. Results are explained in terms of a cue diagnosticity account of impression formation and suggest that a taxonomy of event types based on SDT may be useful in furthering our understanding of how public trust in risk managers is gained and lost.     

The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication: An Empirical Study

This study examines a key component of environmental risk communication; trust and credibility. The study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, six hypotheses regarding the perceptions and determinants of trust and credibility were tested against survey data. The hypotheses were supported by the data. The most important hypothesis was that perceptions of trust and credibility are dependent on three factors: perceptions of knowledge and expertise; perceptions of openness and honesty; and perceptions of concern and care. In the second part, models were constructed with perceptions of trust and credibility as the dependent variable. The goal was to examine the data for findings with direct policy implications. One such finding was that defying a negative stereotype is key to improving perceptions of trust and credibility.     

Exploring the Dimensionality of Trust in Risk Regulation

This article investigates possible differential levels of trust in government regulation across five different risk contexts and the relationship between a number of concepts that might be thought of as comprising distinctive "dimensions" of trust. It appeared that how people perceive government and its policies toward risk regulation was surprisingly similar for each of the five risk cases. A principal-component analysis showed that the various trust items could best be described by two dimensions: a general trust dimension, which was concerned with a wide range of trust-relevant aspects, such as competence, care, fairness, and openness, and a scepticism component that reflects a sceptical view regarding how risk policies are brought about and enacted. Again, the results were surprisingly similar across the five risk cases, as the same solution was found in each of the different samples. It was also examined whether value similarity has an additional value in predicting trust in risk regulation, compared to the more conventional aspects of trust. Based on the two independent trust factors that were found in this study, a typology of trust is proposed that ranges from full trust to a deep type of distrust. It is argued that for a functioning society it could well be more suitable to have critical but involved citizens in many situations.     

Culture, Cosmopolitanism, and Risk Management

Most cultural approaches to risk management deal with the connections between the forms of social relations within groups and the risk concerns of those groups. According to these theories, a certain limited set of different relational forms (usually three, four, or five) lead to specific, different and conflicting, risk concerns. In contrast to these theories, cosmopolitanism is an approach to culture that focuses, not on forms of sociality, but on changes among forms—expansions and contractions in the inclusivity of forms and movement by persons from one form of sociality to another. Relative to other cultural theories, cosmopolitanism thus is much more concerned with the solution of risk management problems than with their origins. Cosmopolitanism can be thought of as a cultural continuum, with cosmopolitanism at one end and pluralism at the other. Cosmopolitan persons are more open to cultural change—and thus the solution of risk management problems. In this article, we outline our new theory of cosmopolitanism, describe a method for measuring it and present an experimental study that tests some implications of the theory. Results from the study support the theory by showing that, compared to pluralistic respondents, cosmopolitan respondents are more inclusive in their risk management judgments—that is, they express equal concern for a local and a national issue, whereas the pluralistic respondents express greater concern in the local case. We discuss the risk management implications of a cosmopolitan approach to culture.     

Consumer Evaluations of Food Risk Management Quality in Europe

In developing and implementing appropriate food risk management strategies, it is important to understand how consumers evaluate the quality of food risk management practices. The aim of this study is to model the underlying psychological factors influencing consumer evaluations of food risk management quality using structural equation modeling techniques (SEM), and to examine the extent to which the influence of these factors is country-specific (comparing respondents from Denmark, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom). A survey was developed to model the factors that drive consumer evaluations of food risk management practices and their relative importance (n= 2,533 total respondents). The measurement scales included in the structural model were configurally and metrically invariant across countries. Results show that some factors appear to drive perceptions of effective food risk management in all the countries studied, such as proactive consumer protection, which was positively related to consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality, while opaque and reactive risk management was negatively related to perceived food risk management quality. Other factors appeared to apply only in certain countries. For example, skepticism in risk assessment and communication practices was negatively related to food risk management quality, particularly so in the UK. Expertise of food risk managers appeared to be a key factor in consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality in some countries. However, trust in the honesty of food risk managers did not have a significant effect on food risk management quality. From the results, policy implications for food risk management are discussed and important directions for future research are identified.     

On the Risk Management and Risk Governance of Petroleum Operations in the Barents Sea Area

In this article, we discuss issues of risk management and risk governance with respect to petroleum operations in the Barents Sea area. We will focus on the decision problems related to whether or not to open the Barents Sea for petroleum activities in special vulnerable areas. We will explore to what extent the International Risk Governance Council risk governance framework provides valuable insights for and assistance to the decisionmaker and other stakeholders (including the industry and NGOs). The study covers issues related to risk assessment and appraisal, risk acceptance and tolerability, the use of the precautionary principle, risk perception, stakeholder involvement, risk communication, and risk management. The overall aim of the article is to point to areas where the risk governance could have been and can be improved for these and similar decision problems.     

Trust and Risk Perception in Western Europe: A Cross-National Study

The relationship between trust and risk perception was investigated, within and across four European countries (Sweden, Spain, United Kingdom, and France). Survey data were collected in 1996; total number of respondents was approximately 1,000 (United Kingdom and Spain), 1,350 (France), and 2,050 (Sweden). Trust was a significant predictor of perceived risk within countries, but the strength of the relationship varied from weak (Spain and France) to moderate (United Kingdom and Sweden). General trust was also a significant source of variation in perceived risk among countries, but much of the variation in perceived risk remained unexplained. Correlations between trust and risk perception also varied depending on the type of risk (i.e., nuclear risks were more influenced by trust) and trust measure (i.e., general trust explained perceived risk better than specific trust). It is concluded that trust may be an element in models explaining risk perception, but it is not as powerful as often argued in the risk perception literature.     

Mediating and Moderating Roles of Trust in Government in Effective Risk Rumor Management: A Test Case of Radiation‐Contaminated Seafood in South Korea

This study has two aims: to identify effective strategies for managing false rumors about risks and to investigate the roles that basic and situational trust in government play in that process. Online experiment data were collected nationwide from 915 adults in South Korea. They were exposed to a false rumor about radiation‐contaminated seafood and were randomly assigned to one of three rumor response conditions (refutation, denial, attack the attacker). One‐way ANOVA indicated that the refutation response yielded the highest level of situational trust in government response (TGR). Results of moderated mediation models using the PROCESS Macro indicated the following. (1) The refutation response had a positive effect on TGR, and the attack response had a negative effect. (2) There were significant interaction effects between the attack response and preexisting basic trust in government (BTG) in that the attack response had a negative effect on TGR only when BTG was low. (3) TGR significantly mediated the relationship between each of the three rumor responses and two dependent variables (intentions for rumor dissemination and for unwarranted actions), but in dramatically different ways across the responses. This study provides evidence for the superior effectiveness of the refutation rumor response and identifies specific roles of trust in government in the risk rumor management process.     

公平偏好下制造商主导型供应链风险传递研究

为研究公平偏好对供应链风险传递的影响,引入公平偏好效用函数,构建制造商主导型供应链风险传递模型,并借助价格弹性系数引申出风险弹性系数,再利用公平偏好矩阵,解决由生产成本波动引起定价与收益风险传递问题。研究表明：制造商公平偏好对定价风险有正向效用,零售商独具公平偏好只对批发价格风险起负向效用却不影响销售价格风险,但制造商公平偏好能促进零售商公平偏好降低销售价格风险;市场规模会弱化公平偏好对定价风险的效用,而价格敏感性则强化该效用;对于收益风险传递提出并证明了一般性结论：收益风险传递与公平偏好无关,只与外部市场有关。数值仿真表明零售商需理性把握公平偏好度以便控制定价风险,而制造商则需要更多地关注公平性,以便于减小定价风险。研究结果对理性权衡收益与风险具有一定的参考价值,对非理性特征下供应链风险管理的良性发展有重要的指导意义。     

Foundational Issues in Risk Assessment and Risk Management

This is a perspective article on foundational issues in risk assessment and management. The aim is to discuss the needs, obstacles, and challenges for the establishment of a renewed, strong scientific foundation for risk assessment and risk management suited for the current and future technological challenges. The focus is on (i) reviewing and discussing the present situation and (ii) identifying how to best proceed in the future, to develop the risk discipline in the directions needed. The article provides some reflections on the interpretation and understanding of the concept of “foundations of risk assessment and risk management” and the challenges therein. One main recommendation is that different arenas and moments for discussion are needed to specifically address foundational issues in a way that embraces the many disciplinary communities involved (from social scientists to engineers, from behavioral scientists to statisticians, from health physicists to lawyers, etc.). One such opportunity is sought in the constitution of a novel specialty group of the Society of Risk Analysis.     

Risk Perceptions and Trust Following the 2010 and 2011 Icelandic Volcanic Ash Crises

Eruptions at the Icelandic volcanoes of Eyjafjallajökull (2010) and Grimsvötn (2011) produced plumes of ash posing hazards to air traffic over northern Europe. In imposing restrictions on air traffic, regulators needed to balance the dangers of accidents or aircraft damage against the cost and inconvenience to travelers and industry. Two surveys examined how members of the public viewed the necessity of the imposed restrictions and their trust in different agencies as estimators of the level of risk. Study 1 was conducted with 213 British citizens (112 males, 101 females), who completed questionnaires while waiting for flights at London City Airport during May 2012. Study 2 involved an online survey of 301 Icelandic citizens (172 males, 127 females, 2 undeclared gender) during April 2012. In both samples, there was general support for the air traffic restrictions, especially among those who gave higher estimates of the likelihood of an air accident or mishap having otherwise happened. However, in both countries, the (minority of) respondents who had personally experienced travel disruption were less convinced that these restrictions were all necessary. Scientists, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and (in Iceland) the Icelandic Department of Civil Protection were all highly trusted, and seen as erring on the side of caution in their risk estimates. Airlines were seen as more likely to underestimate any risk. We conclude that perceptions of the balance between risk and caution in judgments under uncertainty are influenced by one's own motives and those attributed to others.     

Fairness and Contract Design

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit incentive contracts when there are some fair‐minded players, but trust contracts that pay a generous wage up front are less efficient than incentive contracts. The principals understand this and predominantly choose the bonus contracts. These results are consistent with recently developed theories of fairness, which offer important new insights into the interaction of contract choices, fairness, and incentives.     

Salient Value Similarity, Social Trust, and Risk/Benefit Perception

It was postulated that shared values determine social trust in institutions and persons related to a technology: One has trust in people holding similar salient values. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that social trust has a positive influence on perceived benefits and a negative impact on perceived risks. Results of a survey of University of Zürich students indicated that the proposed causal model explained perception of pesticides, nuclear power, and artificial sweetener very well. When social trust was controlled, the relation between risks and benefits perceived diminished. Results indicate that social trust is a key predictive factor of the perceived risks and benefits of a technology, and provide support for the salient values similarity theory of social trust.     

Social Contagion of Risk Perceptions in Environmental Management Networks

An important requisite for improving risk communication practice related to contentious environmental issues is having a better theoretical understanding of how risk perceptions function in real‐world social systems. Our study applied Scherer and Cho's social network contagion theory of risk perception (SNCTRP) to cormorant management (a contentious environmental management issue) in the Great Lakes Basin to: (1) assess contagion effects on cormorant‐related risk perceptions and individual factors believed to influence those perceptions and (2) explore the extent of social contagion in a full network (consisting of interactions between and among experts and laypeople) and three “isolated” models separating different types of interactions from the full network (i.e., expert‐to‐expert, layperson‐to‐layperson, and expert‐to‐layperson). We conducted interviews and administered questionnaires with experts (e.g., natural resource professionals) and laypeople (e.g., recreational and commercial anglers, business owners, bird enthusiasts) engaged in cormorant management in northern Lake Huron (n = 115). Our findings generally support the SNCTRP; however, the scope and scale of social contagion varied considerably based on the variables (e.g., individual risk perception factors), actors (i.e., experts or laypeople), and interactions of interest. Contagion effects were identified more frequently, and were stronger, in the models containing interactions between experts and laypeople than in those models containing only interactions among experts or laypeople.     

Examining Public Trust in Risk‐Managing Organizations After a Major Disaster

This research investigates the public's trust in risk‐managing organizations after suffering serious damage from a major disaster. It is natural for public trust to decrease in organizations responsible for mitigating the damage. However, what about trust in organizations that address hazards not directly related to the disaster? Based on the results of surveys conducted by a national institute, the Japanese government concluded, in a White Paper on Science and Technology, that the public's trust in scientists declined overall after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Because scientists play a key role in risk assessment and risk management in most areas, one could predict that trust in risk‐managing organizations overall would decrease after a major disaster. The methodology of that survey, however, had limitations that prevented such conclusions. For this research, two surveys were conducted to measure the public's trust in risk‐managing organizations regarding various hazards, before and after the Tohoku Earthquake (n = 1,192 in 2008 and n = 1,138 in 2012). The results showed that trust decreased in risk‐managing organizations that deal with earthquakes and nuclear accidents, whereas trust levels related to many other hazards, especially in areas not touched by the Tohoku Earthquake, remained steady or even increased. These results reject the assertion that distrust rippled through all risk‐managing organizations. The implications of this research are discussed, with the observation that this result is not necessarily gratifying for risk managers because high trust sometimes reduces public preparedness for disasters.     

Public Trust in Government Concerning Tobacco Control in Japan

This study investigated public trust and its determinants concerning the government's control of tobacco in Japan. We focused on the two issues of government policies to ban smoking by minors and increase taxes on tobacco. We conducted a questionnaire survey in which respondents were asked to assess their trust in the government, the government's fairness and competency, and their value similarity with the government. One thousand three hundred and ninety-four respondents agreed to participate in the survey out of 2,600 randomly sampled adults over 20 years old from all over Japan. The results of multiple regression analysis confirmed that value similarity is the strongest predictor of public trust in the government. On the affirmatively supported issue of prohibiting smoking among minors, the results further indicated that assessment of competency is a stronger predictor than assessment of fairness. In contrast, assessment of fairness is a stronger predictor than assessment of competency for the still divided issue of increasing tobacco tax. Respondents who had low concern and had not formed clear opinions on the issues showed a weak link between assessment of value similarity and trust. Based on these findings, we considered the implications for the government's implementation of tobacco controls.     

Chemical and Radiation Environmental Risk Management: Differences, Commonalities, and Challenges

Driven by differing statutory mandates and programmatic separation of regulatory responsibilities between federal, state, and tribal agencies, distinct chemical and radiation risk management strategies have evolved. In the field this separation poses real challenges since many of the major environmental risk management decisions we face today require the evaluation of both types of risks. Over the last decade, federal, state, and tribal agencies have continued to discuss their different approaches and explore areas where their activities could be harmonized. The current framework for managing public exposures to chemical carcinogens has been referred to as a "bottom up approach." Risk between 10(-4) and 10(-6) is established as an upper bound goal. In contrast, a "top down" approach that sets an upper bound dose limit and couples with site specific As Low As Reasonably Achievable Principle (ALARA), is in place to manage individual exposure to radiation. While radiation risk are typically managed on a cumulative basis, exposure to chemicals is generally managed on a chemical-by-chemical, medium-by-medium basis. There are also differences in the nature and size of sites where chemical and radiation contamination is found. Such differences result in divergent management concerns. In spite of these differences, there are several common and practical concerns among radiation and chemical risk managers. They include 1) the issue of cost for site redevelopment and long-term stewardship, 2) public acceptance and involvement, and 3) the need for flexible risk management framework to address the first two issues. This article attempts to synthesize key differences, opportunities for harmonization, and challenges ahead.