Trust, Risk Perception and GM Food: A Test of Two Competing Theoretical Frameworks. N. C. Allum, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
It is often suggested that perception of technological risks are related to a lack of trust in scientists, governments and industries. The introduction of GM foods in the USA and in Europe is a recent case in point. In most empirical studies, however, the notion of ‘trust’ is theoretically under-specified and its operationalisation correspondingly weak. A new framework, the Salient Values Similarity (SVS) theory of trust (Earle and Cvetkovitch,1995), has recently been used in a number of studies of risk perception. In this formulation, trust is granted to those actors that people perceive as sharing similar values to themselves in relation to the issue. Another influential theoretical conceptualisation of social trust comes from Barber (1983) who proposed that trust is granted according to beliefs about actors’ ‘fiduciary responsibility’ and ‘technical competence’. This paper presents results from the first study that (1) explicitly tests these two competing theories of trust as a determinant of risk perceptions; (2) develops empirical quantitative measures of Barber’s concepts. A random sample of the UK population (N=500) completed a postal survey on their perception of risks from GM foods and their trust in genetic scientists, industry and government. Alternative theoretical models derived from the frameworks of E&C and Barber are tested using structural equation modelling. Preliminary results indicate that Barber’s dimensions of ‘technical competence’ and ‘fiduciary responsibility’ are not strongly related to perceptions of GM food risk while E&C’s SVS measures are highly predictive of risk perceptions. Furthermore, when fitting a model that controls for SVS, Barber’s two dimensions are uncorrelated. This suggests that the perception of shared salient values are at the root of all kinds of social judgments of trust. Some implications for risk management are discussed.
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