Understanding Trust: Implications for Government and Industry Risk Communicators. R. E. O’Connor, Pennsylvania State University; G. W. Bassett, University of Illinois Chicago; and H. C. Jenkins-Smith and C. L. Silva, University of New Mexico
Branden Johnson posits that trust is best understood as a multidimensional construct with competence, fiduciary, and informational dimensions. Our research explores whether people actually treat trust as a multidimensional construct when they evaluate communications from government, industry, and interest group sources. Then we address the "so what" question to ascertain the importance of trust judgments on risk perceptions and policy preferences. Under what circumstances does trust facilitate communications? Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for improving risk communications. Trust judgments in situations of risk communications are likely to be contextually related to the topic and the message. We examine trust in the context of one particularly contentious and vexatious issue: disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Data are three random samples of American adults contacted by phone in 1995. One sample is drawn from citizens of Nevada, the location of the potential radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain. A second sample is composed of citizens who live in counties that have nuclear power plants where radioactive waste is currently stored. The third sample is drawn from Americans who neither live in Nevada nor close to a nuclear power plant.
US Department of Energy.
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