CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
published: 17 April 2020
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2020.00013

A Framework for Exploring Trust and
Distrust in Natural Resource
Management
Jens Emborg 1*, Steven E. Daniels 2 and Gregg B. Walker 3
1

Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2 Department of
Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, United States, 3 School of Communication and
Media, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States

Edited by:
Joseph A. Hamm,
Michigan State University,
United States
Reviewed by:
Lisa PytlikZillig,
University of Nebraska, United States
James G. Cantrill,
Northern Michigan University,
United States
*Correspondence:
Jens Emborg
jee@ifro.ku.dk
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Science and Environmental
Communication,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Communication
Received: 20 September 2019
Accepted: 12 February 2020
Published: 17 April 2020
Citation:
Emborg J, Daniels SE and Walker GB
(2020) A Framework for Exploring
Trust and Distrust in Natural Resource
Management. Front. Commun. 5:13.
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2020.00013

How can one simultaneously hold multiple trust judgments—some positive, some
negative—and what relevance does this have to natural resource management
processes? The paper examines trust through a lens of multiple simultaneous trust
judgments, with application to the literature on trust in natural resource management.
The conceptual contributions are (1) a clear distinction between trust and distrust,
(2) how multiple trust/distrust judgments can co-exist, and (3) how multiple trust
judgments can be assigned to individual vs. social/institutional scales. A framework for
trust/distrust evaluation emerges in the form of a Trust/Distrust Matrix. One dimension of
the matrix is the scales to which trust judgments may be assigned and one is the trust/
distrust-judgments one makes that can either be calculus-based or identification-based.
A set of propositions relevant to natural resource management are derived from the
matrix. The fundamental purpose of this article is to bridge theory and practice.
Keywords: trust building, distrust management, trust judgments, trustworthiness, environmental conflict,
collaboration, public involvement, facilitation process design

INTRODUCTION
“I really trust Chris, our local Park Manager, but I don’t trust the Parks Agency at all.”

Various permutations of this sentiment have arisen many times in the authors’ collective experience
as environmental facilitators and meditators. On face value, it appears inconsistent: how can
you trust the local representative of an agency you fundamentally distrust? Trying to more fully
understand such apparent contradictions serves as the point of departure for this article. The
particular focus is on how an individual can simultaneously hold multiple overlapping and interrelated trust judgments. More intriguingly, how can some of those trust judgments be positive and
others negative?
The fundamental purpose of this article is to build stronger ties between theory in trust
scholarship and the practice of natural resource management. Trust is such an important concept
that many disciplines have quite well-established research traditions on it. Our goal is to draw upon
the general trust literature in a way that contributes to the natural resources-related literature by
providing a framework that enables rigorous yet efficient analysis of simultaneous trust/distrust
judgments. The most salient conceptual cornerstones of this article are (1) a clear differentiation
between trust and distrust, (2) how multiple trust judgments can emerge and co-exist, and (3) how
multiple trust judgments can be assigned at different social/organizational scales. The hope is that
this framework can help natural resource managers on the front lines of controversial decision

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mix of feeling and rational thinking, and so to exclude one or the
other from the analysis of trust leads only to misconceptions that
conflate trust with faith or prediction1 .”

situations understand trust and distrust more completely
and utilize that knowledge to move those situations in
constructive directions.
This paper follows a straightforward path to achieve its
objectives. First, we review key concepts in the theoretical
literature on trust, striving to summarize the breadth of the
ideas without either falling victim to paradigmatic partisanship
or becoming entangled in the tall grass of terminology. Second,
a trust-distrust framework is outlined, which is informed by
both the general and natural resource-specific literatures. Finally,
a series of propositions is presented that offers pragmatic
suggestions on how to think through trust and distrust issues
in the vertically differentiated administrative structures that
characterize most natural resource management contexts. A
selective review of the literature on trust in natural resource
management is also presented as an Appendix.

Components of Trust
At its core, trust involves four components: (1) the trustor who is
making the trust judgment; (2) the trustee, or target of the trust
judgment (Mayer et al., 1995; Möllering, 2006; Baer and Colquitt,
2018); (3) the domain (area or type of behavior) to which the trust
judgment is being applied (Lewicki and Wiethoff, 2000; Baer and
Colquitt, 2018); and (4) the trust judgment itself (Luhmann, 1979;
Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Möllering, 2006).
The (pre)dispositions of the trustor—the innate tendencies (or
propensity) of an individual to trust or distrust is commonly
seen as a major antecedent of trust at the individual level
(Mayer et al., 1995; Kramer, 1999; Baer and Colquitt, 2018). The
term “dispositional trust” emerges from the term “disposition,”
referring to a person’s personality or outlook. Dispositional trust
is not (in our view) a specific type of trust judgment per se, as
it is a predilection that makes certain trust judgments more or
less likely than others. As such, two people might observe exactly
the same behavior by a third yet draw substantially different trust
inferences from it. From psychological research of personality
traits, it seems evident that “people differ in their inherent
propensity to trust” (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 715). Such individual
personality differences in propensity to trust (or distrust) relate to
the early psychosocial development, life experience and cultural
background (Rotter, 1967, 1971; Mayer et al., 1995; Lewicki and
Tomlinson, 2014). Propensity to trust seems to be a relatively
stable within-party factor (Mayer et al., 1995), although trust
judgments may be influenced by the affective state of the
trustor (van Knippenberg, 2018). Trust development can be
considered a self-reinforcing reciprocal process of exchanges
between parties (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Korsgaard, 2018),
making trust dynamic in the sense that levels of trust will change
over time in any relationship.
While the target of trust judgments (the trustee) is often
another person, other scales of social organization can be trusted
as well. Just as trust judgments can be made toward someone,
so can they be made toward a family, a business, a profession,
etc. To account for trust at the aggregated and abstract scale,
scholars typically include a form of trust that primarily operates
in relation to the social systems, institutions, roles, and functions
of the society, i.e., systems-based trust (Luhmann, 1979; Lewis
and Weigert, 1985; Misztal, 1996; Sztompka, 1999; Giddens,
2001; Möllering, 2006; Bachmann, 2018). This type of trust
judgment is impersonal in that it is not assigned to an individual

CONCEPT REVIEW
In The Republic, Plato referred to trust as one of the four
“affections arising in the soul” (along with intellection, thought
and imagination, Bloom, 1968, p. 511d). Various philosophers
(e.g., Kant, 1785; Gregor and Timmermann, 2012 trans) and
social theorists [e.g., Simmel, 1950 (1908)] have wrestled with it
since. It has been described as foundational to social order in that
it allows for emergence of cooperative behavior. It fulfills this role
by replacing uncertainty about how people will act with the belief
that their behavior is in fact predictable.
Trust has been studied in a daunting range of disciplines (e.g.,
business, criminal justice, economics, organizational behavior,
political science, psychology, and sociology), resulting in many
conceptualizations of trust (Luhmann, 1979; Barber, 1983;
Kramer and Tyler, 1996; Rousseau et al., 1998; Thomas, 1998;
Kramer, 1999; Sztompka, 1999; Cook et al., 2005; Möllering,
2006; Lewicki and Tomlinson, 2014; Searle et al., 2018). Many
conceptions of trust consider risk to be a defining parameter for
“trusting situations” e.g., Lewicki and Bunker (1996), and Lewis
and Weigert (1985) contending that trust “always involve an
unavoidable element of risk and potential doubt” (p. 968). Trust
has been described as “not mere predictability but confidence
in the face of risk” (Lewicki and Bunker, 1996, p. 116). Along
the same lines Boon and Holmes (1991) define trust as “a state
involving confident positive expectations about another’s motives
with respect to oneself in situations entailing risks” (p. 194).
Trust can under some circumstances be considered primarily a
rational judgment based on a calculative assessment of a person’s
trustworthiness as well as the incentives in play (Deutsch, 1958;
Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Gambetta, 1988; Ferrin et al., 2007),
while under other circumstances trust might primarily stem from
a relational, affective, or emotional basis that relates to the bonds
of friendship, partnership, and love (Lewis and Weigert, 1985;
Jones, 1996; Burke and Stets, 1999; Weber and Carter, 2003;
van Knippenberg, 2018). This distinction has also been described
as the “affective-cognitive duality of trust” (Baer and Colquitt,
2018, p. 172) and both must be taken into account as argued
by Lewis and Weigert, 1985 (p. 972):”Trust in everyday life is a

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1 Understanding trust as a rational judgment choice includes consideration of
game theory experiments wherein participants cooperate/compete in repeated
interactions under various incentives structures and monitoring options (Deutsch,
1958; Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Ferrin et al., 2007). Understanding trust as a
relational, affective- and emotion-based concept involves studying psychological
constructs such as identity, orientations, attitudes, values, identification, emotions,
affection and commitment (Jones and George, 1998; Burke and Stets, 1999; Weber
and Carter, 2003; van Knippenberg, 2018). In most situations, trust is a blend
of affective and more cognitive judgments (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Möllering,
2001).

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itself and the psychological state of trusting. Möllering draws on
a thread of ideas grounded in the works of Simmel 1950 (1908);
1990 (1907), further developed by Luhmann (1979), Lewis and
Weigert (1985), as well as Giddens (1991) who states that trust
“presumes a leap to commitment, a quality of “faith” which is
irreducible” (Giddens, 1991, p. 19):

but is assigned to organizations (e.g., an airline or NGO) and
abstract systems (e.g., education or government) (Luhmann,
1979; Misztal, 1996; Giddens, 2001; Gillespie and Siebert, 2018).
Such impersonal assignment of trust is considerably more
complex than interpersonal trust (Gillespie and Siebert, 2018)
and might therefore be more diffuse in nature as described by
Bachmann (2018, p. 219): “. . . a potential trustor has general,
often diffuse, confidence in the functioning of social systems,
irrespective of whether these are seen as a highly abstract set
of rules or more concrete organizational structures.” In this
sense “trust means having confidence in ‘abstract systems”’
(Giddens, 2001, p. 680). Such systems-based trust draws on
subtle socially constructed norms and learned social interaction
patterns, which can be highly variable within a society, over time,
between groups and from country to country (Fukuyama, 1995;
Sztompka, 1999; Six, 2018). To the extent that trust judgments
at this scale rely on the credibility, stability, standard procedures,
and transparency of institutions and organizations, they could be
seen as calculative, rational and rule-based. By the same token
systems-scale trust judgments can arise from one’s affiliation with
institutions and adherence to the values they represent.
Trust judgments can also be specific to a particular domain,
e.g., related to competencies, types of behaviors, or aspects
of life—“we do not trust everyone equally in every situation”
(Baer and Colquitt, 2018, p. 168). We may trust a person to
excel in mathematics but not in sports or music. Similarly,
trust judgments in a given context may vary according
to perceptions of the target’s trustworthiness with regards
to technical competence vs. moral character and fiduciary
responsibility, as discussed by Barber (1983) making the point
that: “Trust as fiduciary obligation goes beyond technically
competent performance to the moral dimension of interaction”
(p. 15). As such, it is possible to trust a person (e.g., a government
official) to have the skills needed, but not the fiduciary obligation
and moral responsibility to carry through. To the extent that
trust judgments are intuitively derived probabilistic inferences
about a future behavior (e.g., “John could be late for his own
wedding”) there is no reason to believe that the target’s behavior
would necessarily be the same in a different domain (e.g., “John
could be an excellent parent”). With these examples it should
be clear that it is entirely possible to hold several simultaneous
trust/distrust judgments across domains within a given target
of trust (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Lewicki and Wiethoff, 2000).
Obviously, in some relationships trust develops within only a few
domains, while in other relationships trust may cover a broad
range of domains. Some relationships may best be described as
“full trusting relationships” with high levels of trust across most
aspects of life, as it may develop among spouses, between childparent, colleagues or well-established teams (mountaineering as
a classic example). Such full trusting relationships are probably
the exception rather than the rule in daily life, in which most
relationships tend to be more ambiguous, somewhere in between
with mixed levels of trust across domains depending on context
over time (Lewicki and Tomlinson, 2014; Sitkin and BijlsmaFrankema, 2018).
Trust, at its core, replaces uncertainty with belief. Möllering
(2001, 2006) provides a detailed account of the trust judgment

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Although the image of the leap of faith is a very fortunate one
since it connotes agency without suggesting perfect control
or certainty, I prefer to speak about “suspension” as the
process that enables actors to deal with irreducible uncertainty
and vulnerability. Suspension is the essence of trust, because
trust as a state of positive expectation of others can only be
reached when reason, routine and reflexivity are combined
with suspension (Möllering, 2006, p. 110).
By suspending uncertainty and embracing vulnerability, trust
reduces the complexity of social life (Luhmann, 1979; Möllering,
2006). The psychological state of trusting precedes the possible
manifestation of trusting behaviors in any given situation and
may be grounded in cognitive, emotional or social (systems)
based processes that bridge from a known past into an
unknowable future.

Research Approaches Into Trust
The expansive nature of the trust literature means that distinct
lines of research or methodological paradigms have emerged
which emphasize and operationalize these four components in
various ways. Consistent with the distinction drawn by Hamm
et al. (2017), one useful categorization is between an elemental
approach and a forms of trust approach. The former flows out
of Mayer et al. (1995) and focuses on attributes of the trustee
–typically benevolence, ability and integrity—to determine why
they are trustworthy. The latter approach, also referred to as
a “bases of trust” approach, begins perhaps with Lewicki and
Bunker (1996), followed by Rousseau et al. (1998) and further
developed by Lewicki and colleagues (Lewicki and Wiethoff,
2000; Lewicki and Tomlinson, 2014). Without needing to declare
the superiority of any particular school of thought, and valuing
the contributions of both, this article flows primarily out of the
forms/bases of trust tradition. One critique that trustworthinessbased researchers make of the forms of trust approach is that
the different bases of trust lead to similar states of vulnerability
for the trustor (Hamm, 2017), which complicates survey design
and statistical inference. But that is exactly part of its usefulness
in the pragmatic argument this paper presents because it readily
accommodates the often contradictory impulses for positive and
negative trust judgments in complex multi-party natural resource
management situations.
A key distinction made in the forms of trust literature is
between calculus- and identification-based trust judgments.
Calculus-based trust, as it typically unfolds in transactional
relationships, is “an ongoing, market-oriented, economic
calculation whose value is determined by the outcomes resulting
from creating and sustaining the relationship relative to the
costs of maintaining or severing it” (Lewicki and Wiethoff, 2000,
p. 88). Calculus-based trust/distrust judgments stem from a
foundation of calculative reasoning, rational consideration of

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a concern that the other may act to do harm, or does not
care about one’s welfare and/or is hostile (1999). Suspicion has
been considered a central cognitive component of distrust, as we
suspect people to take advantage of us, fail to follow through
on their commitments, exploit our good faith and good will, or
manipulate the relationship to their own ends (Deutsch, 1958;
Lewicki et al., 2006).
In essence we concur with the conceptualization that there
are (at least) three different psychological states: unfamiliarity—
before any form of trust judgment has yet been made; trust—
a confident positive expectation of another’s conduct; and
distrust—a confident negative expectation of another’s conduct
(McAllister, 1995). This is clearly captured in the broad definition
of distrust from van de Walle and Six (2014) that distrust
is generally defined in terms of negative expectations toward
people’s intentions or behaviors, and concurs with the summary
of Bies et al. (2018, drawing on Rousseau et al., 1998, Lewicki
et al., 1998, and Lewicki et al., 2006) “that trust reflects
positive expectations and willingness to be vulnerable to another,
whereas distrust involves (pervasive) negative expectations and
perceptions about the intentions or behavior of another” (p. 304,
parenthesis added). Distrust (like trust) judgments are influenced
by the judger’s personality/propensity, mood, emotions and
affective state. Certain persistent attitudes, such as those linked
to cynicism, may play a significant role in the development of
distrust and conceptualized as dispositional distrust (Andersson
and Bateman, 1997; Dean et al., 1998; Macey, 2002).
Distrust is distinctly different from low trust, or absence
of trust, which is the inability to make a trust judgment
at all (Sitkin and Roth, 1993; Sitkin and Stickel, 1996;
Sitkin and Bijlsma-Frankema, 2018). This distinction allows
for a nuanced trust/distrust-analysis and presentation of
aggregated trust/distrust-profiles across relevant trust/distrustdimensions of a given situation where valid reasons (and/or
affections) to trust occur in a mix with equally valid reasons
(and/or disaffections) to distrust, as presented by Lewicki and
Wiethoff (2000). Such nuanced trust/distrust judgments within
a relationship can develop and exist across actions or domains of
the relationship (I might trust him to drive me home, but distrust
him look after my child) or be context specific (when it is late
in the month I don’t trust him to pay me back). Such different,
co-existing and evolving trust/distrust judgments engender
ambiguity and ambivalence in relationships (Bies et al., 2018).
In some situations, domains, or times we may trust a certain
person while yet in others we may have equally valid distrust of
him/her, allowing for “incorporation of ambivalence (e.g., when
both trust and distrust are simultaneously present) and multiplex
relationships (i.e., trust in some domains in a relationship
and distrust in others)” (Sitkin and Bijlsma-Frankema, 2018,
p. 53). Lewicki and Tomlinson (2014) posit that those mixed
reasons and judgments are likely to be either calculus-based or
identification-based and that they all together form multifaceted
trust relationships in which elements of trust and distrust coexist. Further, they contend that “Relationships balanced with
trust and distrust are likely to be healthier than relationships
grounded in only trust” (p. 112) in particular in organizational,
business and managerial relationships, where “unquestioning
trust without distrust is more likely to create more problems than

risks and benefits, and prediction based on available information,
data, and experience—you trust someone because you have
seen them reliably follow through on their past commitments.
This form of trust may also be enhanced through a range of
contractual/incentive structures designed to make trustworthy
behavior both explicitly expected and also in all parties’
best interests.
Identification-based trust is “based on identification with
the other’s desires and intentions. This type of trust exists
because the parties can effectively understand and appreciate
one another’s wants” (Lewicki and Wiethoff, 2000, p. 89).
Identification-based trust emerges from shared values, common
goals, emotional bonds, identification with others’ interests,
concerns, and intentions; and judgments of other parties’ valuesystems, ethical and moral character. Identification-based trust
embraces the conception of trust as encapsulated interests
(Hardin, 1991, 2002), according to which “we trust you because
we think you take our interests to heart and encapsulate our
interests in your own” (Cook et al., 2005, p. 5). It also embraces
the work of Earle and Cvetkovich (1995) pointing to the
importance of shared values for trust development, as aptly
captured by Siegrist et al. (2000, p. 356): “One has social trust
in people who share similar salient values” in context of new
technology and environmental risk. Identification-based trust
can be activated by a suite of in-group markers (e.g., if I am
a member of the Hikers Alliance, I may more readily trust
another member) (Lewicki and Bunker, 1996), and it may be
quite intuitive in that it “feels right” (van Knippenberg, 2018),
or takes the “fast form” of “swift trust” as seen in temporary task
or working relationships (Blomqvist and Cook, 2018). A sense
of shared group membership or belonging can arguably create
mutual understanding and the assumption that certain desires,
values and intentions are shared.
In summary, the construct “trust” is a psychological
state grounded in cognitive/calculative and affective/relational
information and processes that bridges from a known past
into an unknowable future. Trust judgments are often domainspecific and can be based on experience with that actor or
can be enhanced by structures or incentives (e.g., calculusbased trust). They can also be informed by the commonalities
and values alignment between the parties (e.g., identificationbased trust). The target of trust can be an individual, a
group, a concrete institution or an abstract social system.
With that foundational understanding, we now turn our
attention to the question of distrust as potentially distinct
from trust.

Trust and Distrust: Two Distinct Judgments
Is distrust merely the absence of trust? Consistent with a growing
body of research and in line with the most recent distrust reviews
(Lewicki et al., 1998; Hardin, 2004; Bies et al., 2018; Sitkin
and Bijlsma-Frankema, 2018) we consider distrust a distinct
judgment rather than simply a lack of trust. Distrust, like trust,
is a grounded judgment based on reasons/affections that require
some familiarity with the target of the judgment. People can
have specific reasons for distrusting someone else, and distrust
may be a sensible response to potential dangers (Larson, 2004).
Kramer captured distrust as a lack of confidence in the other,
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FIGURE 1 | The Trust/Distrust Matrix (TDM).

management decision processes—we have developed the
Trust/Distrust Matrix (TDM) presented in Figure 1. This
is less an attempt to construct new theory than to weave
together key aspects from existing theoretical constructs into
a compact framework that resonates with our lived experience
as the designers and facilitators of natural resource conflict
management processes. The key elements of the framework
are the trustor, the trustee/target of trust/distrust, the bases
of trust/distrust and the scales at which trust/distrust can
be assigned within a particular context. The matrix has two
intersecting dimensions: one represented by the social scale at
which trust is assigned to the trustee (or target) represented
by the micro scale of individuals or groups and the macro
scales of institutions, organizations and other societal systems;
and the second represented by the bases for the trustor’s
judgments, either a calculus-based or identification-based.
Within each of the cells of this matrix, there may be either trust
or distrust judgments (as developed by the trustor facing the
trustee/target(s) of trust). It should be noted that any particular
trust/distrust judgment is time and context specific, recalling
that trust judgments may vary over time and across domains of a
given relationship.
In a heuristic sense, the TDM presents trust/distrust
judgments as dependent variables that are functions of
combining the judgment processes that occur within the trustor
(the forms/bases of trust/distrust represented by the columns)
and the attributes of the situation including the trustworthiness
of the target(s) of trust/distrust (the scales/rows).
The structure of the TDM represents an adoption of a
clear distinction between trust and distrust (Sitkin and BijlsmaFrankema, 2018), as well as the conclusions of Lewicki and
Tomlinson (2014) that relationships are multifaceted in terms
of trust and distrust, where trust/distrust judgments tend to be
either calculus-based or identification-based. It is possible to have

solutions” (p. 112). Trust and distrust are both likely present and
fundamentally important in sustained relationships, since they
lead to different beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Initial distrust
and/or breach of trust can lead to short-sighted opportunistic
behaviors that tend to undermine the evolution of cooperation
in the long run (Axelrod, 1984), while high trust levels facilitates
cooperation (Gambetta, 1988; Deutsch, 2000, 2011). There can
also be analogous intertemporal/cyclical dynamics; just as there
can be gradually increasing layers of trust in an on-going
relationship, there can also be “spiraling distrust” with significant
negative consequences (Korsgaard, 2018; Sitkin and BijlsmaFrankema, 2018).
Our professional experience as facilitator/mediators has led
us to conclude that many natural resource situations are
characterized by a substantial amount of clearly articulated
and strongly held distrust judgments that can contribute to
polarization and rancor. The accumulated costs of distrust can
be high for individuals and societies, because inasmuch as
trust tends to engender trust and the dividends of cooperation,
distrust may be even more self-reinforcing, leading to division
and decline (Bijlsma-Frankema et al., 2015). Merely conflating
distrust with low trust is a blunt conceptualization that fails
to anticipate the impact of the acrimony that can accompany
distrustful relationships. This article’s conceptualization of trust
and distrust as being equally confident conclusions arising from
analogous (cognitive/affective) processes is very different from
conflating distrust with low trust, and strongly resonates with our
experience in contentious natural resource settings.

THE TRUST/DISTRUST MATRIX—A
COMPACT FRAMEWORK
In an effort to create an integrative representation of the trust
scholarship—particularly as it can inform natural resource
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somewhat independently of the local Agency. As will be
expanded upon below (section Propositions Inferred From the
Trust/Distrust Matrix) the vertical differentiation of scales in the
framework contributes substantially to its applicability in natural
resource management situations/scenarios, which often involve
hierarchical administrative structures, wherein decisions with
local significance may be made at levels far removed from the
locales being affected by them.
In summary, the Trust/Distrust Matrix offers an intellectual
contribution that is more integrative than innovative. First,
the matrix makes a clear distinction between trust and
distrust and adopts the view that the presence of trust or
distrust implies dramatically different expectations, social
dynamics and outcomes. Second, it accommodates the need
to comprehend trust across scales—that is, to distinguish
between trustworthiness of an individual and the institution
he or she represents. Third, the matrix distinguishes between
two fundamentally different bases of trust/distrust judgments:
a) a trust/distrust judgment merely based on a calculation
of likelihood based on available information, such as past
experiences, incentives/contractual requirements and expected
gains/losses of future transactions; and b) a trust/distrust
judgment that emerges from a stronger/weaker/absent
foundation of shared identity, values and worldviews leading to
mutual understanding, collective identity and appreciation for
others’ values, interests and needs2 .

strong identification-based reasons to feel like trusting someone,
while one’s track record of experience with them indicates that
such trust would be misplaced. Further, it is possible to trust
a person in some domains while distrusting in other domains
of life—e.g., trusting a friend on money issues, while not
trusting him/her to babysit. Accordingly, it should be noted that
such multifaceted, multiplex relationships may lead to complex
trust/distrust assessments (across several domains within the
relationship) necessitating nuanced and thoughtful trust/distrust
management approaches (as discussed in section Propositions
Inferred From the Trust/Distrust Matrix) that simultaneously
address several trust/distrust issues within a relationship. Such
assessments and management approaches can be considered as
working at a “fine-grained,” multifaceted analytical level below
the scale of the individual, as several domains within a given
relationship may need to be considered.
The social scale to which trust judgments can be assigned
is coarsely depicted as a micro/macro dichotomy but also each
of those is further sub-divisible. The appropriate division of
scales is not fixed; one or more of the scales in Figure 1 might
not be applicable in a given situation and other scales might
be more so. The key point is that even as trust judgments
are assigned to individuals, they ought to be characterized
as actors who are socially or organizationally embedded in
hierarchical systems, and therefore their behaviors are not
truly independent but variously mandated, constrained, or at
least informed by that embeddedness. Moving beyond the
assignment of trust judgments to individuals, the notion of
systems-based trust is closely attached to societal structures and
institutions occurring at a larger scale than the individual, such
as government institutions, bureaucracies, cultural institutions,
education systems, private firms, NGO’s etc. In our matrix,
systems-based trust is represented by the macro-scale trust
component—which is the scale at which abstract and impersonal
systems dominate. When a person expresses trust in a certain
organization this trust will in many cases be systems-based,
shaped by the values, norms, rules and routines of this specific
organization. The matrix provides a useful deconstruction
of systems-based trust by identifying distinct calculus and
identification bases for it. It is clearly possible to make calculusbased judgments regarding a system (the train has been late
the last four times I used it) as well as identification-based
judgments (as a member of the Green Party, I trust their analysis
of proposed laws).
As indicated in the introductory example the target(s) of trust
in a given situation may simultaneously cut across roles and
scales—as Chris may be trusted as an individual (micro scale),
while at the same time being distrusted as an agent/embodiment
of the Parks Agency (macro scale) who is professionally bound
to implement and/or explain Parks Agency decisions. In such
situations it is possible, as depicted in the matrix, to consider
Chris and the Parks Agency as two different (but closely
interconnected) targets of trust/distrust represented by the micro
and macro levels, respectively. As noted above, it is entirely
possible to flexibly consider even more levels/scales within
the idea and structure of the framework—such as the (local)
Parks Agency is part of a Regional Office, which is part of
the Federal Government, which both may be trusted/distrusted
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Extending the Trust/Distrust Matrix
A core goal of the TDM is to readily represent multiple
simultaneous trust/distrust judgments. Figures 2–5 shows four
different combinations of cells in the matrix being “lit up”
to display complex combinations of trust/distrust judgments3 .
Figure 2 coveys the sentiments expressed in the allegorical leadin to this paper: “I trust Chris, our local parks manager, but
I do not trust the Parks Agency at all” because the individual
judgments toward Chris are trusting while the more macro scale
judgments toward the Parks Agency are distrusting.
With more specific information about the bases for
judgments, it is possible to represent simultaneous trust
and distrust judgments about the same person (Figures 3, 4).
It is also possible to trust a macro organization more than any
particular member or representative of it, as in Figure 5.
Our final remark on the use of the TDM is that it is
intended to be a flexible tool to help structure and inform
thinking, communication and analysis of a very complicated
issue of great importance for natural resource management. In
its compact form it may not immediately fit all situations or
purposes. In some contexts, it may make sense to further develop
the matrix—for example by adding more rows, in order to
represent several participants in a given multi-party negotiation
2 The issues of trustworthiness and antecedents to trust judgments has had their
own foci in the general trust literature, but is largely beyond the scope of this
article; for an entrée article see Baer and Colquitt (2018), for a classic see Mayer
et al. (1995).
3 This visual simplification does not adequately convey the high/low (/absence)
continuum of trust and distrust. However, this is where we start to illustrate the
potential of the TDM – and it is not difficult to imagine various ways to capture
and depict the continuum (colors, shading, font size etc.).

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FIGURE 2 | “I trust Chris, our local parks manager, but I do not trust the Parks
Agency at all.”

FIGURE 4 | “Those environmentalists can’t be trusted, but she has proven to
be quite reliable.”

FIGURE 3 | “He’s my brother, but he let me down the last three times I needed
him.”

FIGURE 5 | “Toyota makes a really good car, but our local dealership is really
shady.”

situation, or by adding more vertical layers or perhaps gradations
in the levels of trust/distrust to enable a more situationally
appropriate analysis.

interpreted through this trust framework could be manifest in
practice. They all take departure from the core argument of this
paper: that holding multiple trust judgments simultaneously is
more typical than rare, and that it is entirely possible that they will
be a mix of trust and distrust judgments (rather than uniformly
positive or negative).

PROPOSITIONS INFERRED FROM THE
TRUST/DISTRUST MATRIX

“Trust Building” Approaches May Often Be
Misapplied to Situations That Really Need
“Distrust Reduction”

The process that gave rise to the TDM can be viewed as akin
to Habermas’ concept of rational reconstruction (1979) as a
source of useful knowledge. We have attempted to interpret the
realities of different forms of trust through the eyes of competent
observers, and thereby reveal the deep structures embedded
within those realities (i.e., scales, types of trust judgments,
and the distinct difference between trust and distrust). If our
interpretation has been on the mark, these deep structures should
be manifest as surface structures that are far more visible and
interactional. In other words, if our framework is valid, it should
correspond to readily visible dynamics and inform practice—
it should mirror our lived experience. To that end, we have
prepared a set of propositions that articulate how structures

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When managers express a need to build trust among certain
stakeholders, they may actually signal the existence of
distrust. In such cases, the first step should focus on the
assessment, management, and reduction of distrust, rather than
(unrealistically) start building trust. Reducing a firmly-held
distrust attitude between well-acquainted parties is a very
different task than creating an initial trust judgment among
people unfamiliar with one another, and indeed there is a
body of literature that concludes that eliminating distrust
may not be all that possible (Sitkin and Bijlsma-Frankema,

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2018). In their study of trust and conflict in national park
management in Benin, Idrissou et al. (2013) observe that
“trust and distrust may appear simultaneously in a relationship
and are considered important coexistent mechanisms for
managing relationship complexity” (p. 67). Consequently, a
clear distinction between trust and distrust may therefore
improve the accuracy of the situation assessment and efficacy of
management decisions.
Although not necessarily distrust, an unwillingness to trust
may be the default condition when parties do not have any
significant relational history. For example, when a new supervisor
is selected to manage a national forest, the local community
may withhold trust until the new manager demonstrates
trustworthiness in some manner. This withholding of trust could
become distrust if the new manager takes actions contrary to the
values of the community.

Resources and Conflict: A Guide for Mediation Practitioners,
proposes that:
Mediators vary on the degree of focus given to the substantive,
procedural, and psychological aspects of the dispute. A
substantive focus deals heavily with the interests of the
parties, helping them assess their case, evaluate their proposals,
identify criteria for consideration or even recommend the
contents of an agreement. A procedural focus concerns the
process-related aspects of the mediation, such as issues around
communications, timing, sequencing or the administrative
elements at play. A psychological focus prioritizes the
relationship and trust between the parties. A given mediation
process on natural resources will shift the focus as needed
based on the dynamics of the negotiation (Jensen et al., 2015,
p. 12).
The use of a third-party mediator/facilitator obviously raises the
issue of whether or not they are trusted or distrusted; the former
is not a forgone conclusion for intervenors any more that for
anyone else.

Direct Attempts to Reduce Distrust May Be
Less Successful Than Indirect Approaches
“Direct attempt” refers to any overt act intended to persuade a
person (trustor) to revise a distrust judgment. From a trustor’s
point of view, a direct appeal to change one’s mind about someone
you distrust is as likely to engender suspicion and generate yet
more distrust. It is more likely to bear fruit if you (as trustee)
change your own behavior to provide valid reasons for others
to change their judgments of your trustworthiness. Fortunately,
you can control your own behavior (and the TDM can suggest
where to start). In doing so, it seems evident that substantive
responses (actual actions) are likely to be more effective than
verbal responses (“cheap talk” ala Bottom et al., 2002). Further,
it seems worthwhile to take the interactive and reflexive nature of
trust/distrust development into account when trying to influence
trust/distrust dynamics (Kim, 2018).
If trying to reduce someone’s distrust judgments toward you
or your organization, it could be worth trying to create a measure
of cognitive dissonance regarding trust and distrust. So if there
seems to be distrust based on value differences, it may be possible
to reduce total distrust by clearly showing trustworthiness
by being consistently reliable and predictable. In this way
calculus-based trust may create openness to distrust reduction
(and trust-building) even in other trust dimensions/scales.
That cognitive dissonance creates the space within which
one’s own trust judgments become subject to revision
(Festinger, 1962).
One form of indirectness involves the use of an impartial
third party (Hocker and Wilmot, 2018). A mediator or facilitator
can create a place and space in which parties can consider
actions—both verbal and non-verbal—that impact trust and
distrust. For example, Engel and Korf, writing in the FAO
document Negotiation and Mediation Techniques for Natural
Resource Management, explain that in “non-direct dealing”
cultures, “mediation is a communal process that involves trusted
leadership.” They add that “the indirect, triangular processes of a
go-between are more desirable to save face, reduce threat, balance
power, and equalize verbal and argumentative abilities” (2005, p.
57). In a similar vein, the United Nations Publication Natural

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Calculus-Based Trust Judgments May Be
More Subject to Revision Than Are
Identification-Based Trust Judgments
Because they are more evidence based, calculus-based trust
judgments can be updated as a relationship unfolds and
are therefore easier to revise than judgments based on
values and identity which usually would be more stable
and deeply embedded. Therefore, it may be an effective
strategy to start out by trying to build calculus-based trust
(e.g., by consistently being reliable, keep your word and
fulfilling obligations). Provision of new evidence (e.g., changed
behavior) that challenges existing calculus-based trust judgments
(cognitive dissonance) could be combined with agreements,
contracts and other incentives that encourage/secure the desired
(trustworthy) behaviors. Several factors along those lines can
act in concert to induce calculus-based trust judgment revision.
From this basis it may be possible to eventually build
identification-based trust in the longer term by building upon
common values and identities (Sitkin and Bijlsma-Frankema,
2018).
To illustrate: One of the authors was involved in the
development of a community-based collaborative group in a
coastal community. The group wanted to work on various
environment and natural resource management issues, including
climate change adaptation. While the stakeholder community
was diverse, many participants acknowledged that they were
skeptical about the group, in part, because of limited trust.
Consequently, the first task the group addressed was the
construction of a “Collaboration Compact.” While not referring
to trust explicitly, the Compact was designed to address factors
that generate trust or distrust (e.g., transparency and inclusion)
(Partnership for Coastal Watersheds, 2019). It served as an
informal contract that specified what behaviors all participants
were expected to exhibit and functioned as a temporary
bridge that allowed people to make the first tentative steps

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organizations, agencies) tend to be heavier and rule-based, and
therefore less flexible and slower to change. Any new evidence
about macro-scale trustworthiness must therefore be stronger
and perhaps based on new revised rules (or leadership) in
order to generate enough new information to induce revision
of judgment. There is evidence of this effect in the health care
system where trust in one’s own doctor can be paired with
distrust in the general system (Peters and Bilton, 2018), which
is analogous to the dynamic we have experienced repeatedly in
the natural resources realm: “I like my local District Ranger,
but the agency is inept/unprofessional/unconstitutional (or all of
the above).”
This implies that managing trust/distrust at each scale could
require an approach that was unique to that scale. If your analysis
indicates that trust is lacking among individuals (rather than
between individuals and your organization as such) it may call
for targeted actions at the person-to-person level such as kitchentable talks or personal involvement of employees in the local
community in order to build relationships and trust. If the
lack of trust (or distrust) is rooted in deep-seated features of
the organization it may require changes of the system as such
to prove trustworthy, such as revised rules, interpretations or
practices—and may involve concerns about how to clearly display
and carry out those changes so they will actually be acknowledged
as trustworthy (e.g., in the form of changed leadership). As the
two levels are inter-linked and embedded, a multi-level design
strategy may be needed, echoing the perspectives of Daniels
et al. (2012) regarding structured approaches to public policy
negotiation and facilitation designs; as well as Peters and Bilton
(2018) regarding trust in health care systems.

toward working with one another until trust could more
organically emerge.

Identification-Based Judgments Are
Revised by Emphasizing Values
Alignment/Compatibility, Shared History,
and Commitment to Place
Identification-based trust judgments are more likely to evolve
as a result of personal interaction, dialogue or insights during
which the persons see new and more nuanced sides of one
another, realizing common identities, shared values and human
needs. That can be as simple as the realization that both parties
actually feel attached to and love the landscapes over which
they are disputing. Or it could be that they realize that they
share values of care, commitment and team-spirit as volunteers
in the local sports clubs (which is not directly related to the
dispute, but nevertheless leads to increased identification and
trust). On the negative side of the ledger, identification-based
distrust can grow as parties realize they have different core values
(Korsgaard, 2018).
Studies highlighted in the Appendix address the values-trust
relationship. Davenport et al. (2007), for example, found that
shared values contributed to trust whereas competing values
constrained trust. Smith et al. (2013) discovered that stakeholders
whose values aligned with public land managers were less likely
to participate in public involvement activities than parties whose
values were different, possibly because they trusted the land
managers to make good management decisions.

Distrust May Motivate Engagement in
Public Decision Processes More Than
Does Trust

In a New or Temporary Relationship One
May Not Have Much Evidence to Judge
From—and Will Use/Seek What Is Available

Several case-studies (e.g., Smith et al., 2013 referred to above)
indicate that distrust can motivate engagement in public policy
processes. Those who distrust either the individual planners or
the broader agency/system has a strong incentive to participate
in order to protect their interests. Those who trust the system
and the personnel have less incentive to show up as they trust that
their interests will be adequately considered and the outcome will
be fair and balanced. In their discussion of the “trust ecology”
framework, Stern and Baird (2015) assert that “positive trust,
lack of trust, and distrust each function differently within a
NRM [natural resource management] institution. . . For example,
a general lack of trust may lead to apathy, hesitancy to become
involved, or active information seeking. Explicit distrust may
more commonly lead to selectively screening information to
confirm one’s beliefs” (p. 14).

“Swift trust” (Blomqvist and Cook, 2018) requires that
typical trust formation processes be abbreviated. Available
information may be selectively chosen, so certain aspects
(calculus/identification-based, micro/macro) may weigh in
disproportionally, perhaps leading to biased perceptions.
Judging a person based on the values and political agendas of
the organization he or she represents may lead to inaccurate
judgment (prejudice) of this person’s trustworthiness. By seeking
information across scales and being aware of the different trust
types it may be possible to get a more nuanced basis for making
accurate trust and distrust judgments.
A recent study explored the extent to which someone is trusted
because of their professional identity, specifically, as a scientist.
Absent other factors, does the person’s position as a scientist
generate trust in an environmental management situation? In
their examination of compliance with fisheries regulations in
Brazil, Shirley and Gore discovered that “the most important
factor influencing non-compliance rate among the population
of professional fishermen in this study group in the Pantanal
was trust in the scientists helping to define the rules” (2019).
They concluded that “Increasing trust in scientists may be one
mechanism for decreasing rates of non-compliance among our
study population” (2019). This trust related to the scientist

Micro-Scale Judgments Are More Subject
to Experience-Based Revision Than Are
Macro (e.g., Systems/Societal) Scale
Judgments
It seems likely that a person would more readily update
their trust judgments about an individual based on directly
observed trustworthy behavior, as opposed to revising their views
toward larger systems/organizations. Social systems (institutions,
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role exemplifies a form of swift trust; trust based on a factor
like a person’s profession or position. Trust/distrust judgments,
decided quickly, can cut in either direction.

“distrust reduction.” Natural resource disputes are often longlived threads of interaction that are woven into the history
of a region, with much the same cast of characters engaged
in repeated episodes. Ill will that emerged in the past among
parties and organizations can become an anchor that is dragged
into every new interaction. The Trust/Distrust Matrix makes
it possible for facilitators to make a nuanced and relevant
assessment of trust and distrust—without drowning in details.
We have conveyed three main distinctions about trust via
our compact framework: between trust and distrust judgments,
between calculus- and identity-bases for those judgments,
and between trust judgments assigned at the individual vs.
more institutional scales. In some situations “management and
mitigation of distrust” may represent a more accurate depiction
of the challenge natural resource managers face, while in other
situations it may be effective to develop trust building strategies
that specifically are designed to build calculus-based trust at
the institutional level, while in yet other situations it may
make more sense to develop strategies that deliberately seeks
to increase trust levels by focusing on individuals’ common
identity, shared values and hopes for the future. By providing a
vocabulary and structure to illuminate such subtle differences,
this compact framework should enable more precise articulation
and targeted responses by natural resource managers to trust and
distrust issues.

Process Design Choices and Trust/Distrust
Development
Taking these propositions from the Trust/Distrust Matrix
together, it becomes easier to see the extent to which
a manager’s/facilitator’s process choices can influence the
development of trust and distrust in a natural resource
management situation. If a given case is characterized by
identification-based distrust among key stakeholders at the
institutional (macro) level, while there simultaneously exists
some level of calculus-based trust at the person-to-person level
(same pattern as Figure 4), a targeted process design could aim to
further strengthen the existing trust at micro level by organizing
relevant field trips, where participants from the key stakeholder
organizations have the opportunity to develop personal bonds
in a constructive setting. That could be a day in the field
succeeded by a good meal and a beer at the bonfire, where
participants can listen and talk to one another. If/when mutual
understanding, empathy and trust has grown at the micro level
a second step could entail mutual invitations among the key
stakeholders to “visit each other’s project sites” to gain insights
about each other’s organizations’ aims and current challenges.
Such targeted dialogue processes could at its best induce
curious perspective taking amongst the stakeholders, leading to
increased levels of mutual understanding, transparency and trust.
Process designs should seek to eliminate polarized arguments
where the parties end up attacking each other’s organizational
aims, values and jurisdiction, which in turn could exacerbate
negative attitudes and attributions, increasing distrust, ingroup out-group dynamics and spiraling conflict escalation. The
example illustrates how the framework could support pragmatic
incorporation of trust and distrust issues into the design and
facilitation of dialogue processes in the vertically differentiated
administrative landscapes of environmental conflict and natural
resource management (Daniels et al., 2012).

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
JE has been the coordinating lead author and researcher
throughout this project. Fundamentally, it has been a joint,
integrated, long-term effort among JE, SD, and GW—to review,
analyze, discuss, and clarify existing trust/distrust conceptions
across scales and integrate them into a useful framework.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful for many fruitful interactions and
learning moments with professionals, stakeholders and citizens
we have met during our work as facilitators and researchers.
We are equally grateful for the inspiration, critical perspectives
and rigorous thinking on the topic from senior colleagues, as
well as from the younger generation of scholars and students. In
particular, we have appreciated inspiring discussions with former
PhD students Cathy Brown Stummann, Mikaela Vasstrøm,
Maya Pasgaard, Jennifer Bond, Riyong Kim Bakkegaard, Katinka
Johansen and Raphael Kweyu, as well as critical reading and
creative thinking provided by Jørn Emborg and Peter Daniels
during the writing process. Finally, we wish to thank the editors
and reviewers for reading our manuscript with great care for
details and nuances while providing constructive comments to
our work.

CONCLUSION
Environmental decision making in the public sphere often
involves a complex web of attitudes, trust judgments, and
attributions. As facilitators of these processes we are often
asked to “build trust,” between natural resource managers and
stakeholders without any further explanation of what that means
or how it might be achieved. Figuring out who will work with
whom (and why) and who distrusts whom (and why) is a big
part of charting a path forward. The trust/distrust framework
presented in this paper frames that task to a considerable extent.
A request for “trust building” may actually be a request for

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APPENDIX: CHARACTERIZATIONS OF
TRUST/DISTRUST IN NATURAL
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
SCHOLARSHIP

managed, distrust will arise among the parties (p. 73). In a recent
study, Coleman and Stern (2018) explain how distrust exists as
complementary to each form of trust (dispositional, rational,
affinitive, procedural), thus receiving significant attention and
discussion. However, overall most of the studies we have
considered pay limited attention to distrust (and in some cases,
none at all).
Many studies present a clear distinction between trust
at the individual/interpersonal level and trust at the
institutional/governmental level. A number of different types
or categories of trust have been identified, of which many have
a fair amount of overlap in content while different words and
terms have been used to capture this content, e.g., personal,
shared values, moral, integrity and affinitive based trust or
systems-based, institutional, organizational and procedural
based trust. The trust terminology has not yet converged in the
natural resource management literature.
It should be equally clear that, in a natural resource
management context, we must acknowledge the importance of
trust across the full continuum of social organizations from the
individual to the institutional/system level—and in this regard
make a distinction between trust as it occurs at the individual
(micro) level and trust as it occurs at institutional/systems
(macro) level (as pinpointed by Bachman and Inkpen, 2011).
While making a clear distinction between trust judgments of the
micro level targets vs. trust judgments of the macro level targets,
it should be noticed that the connections between the two levels
are complex—e.g., in that the institutional/macro level forms part
of the context for the trust development at the individual/micro
level (Bachman and Inkpen, 2011).

While the bulk of this paper attempts to develop an integrative
representation of general trust/distrust concepts and academic
approaches that resonates with our experience as process
designers and facilitators, it is also useful to contextualize
this effort within the trust literature arising within the
natural resource management field. Consequently, as we
have been developing our approach to trust and distrust,
we have considered a range of publications that address
trust/distrust in a natural resource management context. We
highlight twenty of these articles in Table A1, selected to
highlight the conceptual, geographic, methodological, and
topical variety in the natural resource management related
trust literature.
Across the breadth of this scholarship we do not see a
sufficiently clear differentiation between trust and distrust and
contend that more extensive attention to distrust is warranted.
To be clear, distrust has received some attention, as the Table text
illustrates. Heemskerk et al. (2015) address distrust explicitly in
the case of small-scale gold mining in Suriname, although their
distinction between trust and distrust is somewhat vague/takenfor-granted. Idrissou et al. (2013) contend that “Calculus-based
trust needs thus to be counter balanced with deterrence-based
trust, which enables the different parties to set the boundaries of
the relationship and the punishments in case of trust breaking.”
They explain that, if calculus-based trust is not constantly

TABLE A1 | Characterizations of trust/distrust in natural resource management contexts.
References

Context

Parties

Trust/distrust factors

Davenport et al., 2007

A National Tallgrass Prairie in the
United States

Community members and the
USDA Forest Service

Social trust (shared values); procedural fairness;
personal trust; trust in the agency

Hamm, 2017

Invasive species management;
Michigan Dept of Natural Resources
(MDNR) and feral swine

MDNR, Michigan hunters

Trustworthiness: vulnerability acceptance, ability.
benevolence, integrity, propensity to trust, etc.

Hamm et al., 2016

State access to private lands for
conservation management

Landowners, Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission

Six drivers of trust: disposition, care, competence,
confidence, fairness, shared values

Heemskerk et al., 2015

Gold mining in Suriname

Gold miners and the government

Interpersonal trust
Institutional trust

Jones et al., 2015

Participatory management frameworks
and NATURA 2000 forest sites in
Greece

Local communities and institutions

Trust in institutions
Social trust
Social networks

Idrissou et al., 2013

Conflict, trust building and national park
management in Benin

National Park management, local
communities

Calculus-based trust
Dysfunctional trust
Distrust
(Continued)

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TABLE A1 | Continued
References

Context

Parties

Trust factors

Kahsay and Bulte, 2019

Participatory management and forest
governance in Ethiopia

Forest managers-management,
forest user groups (FUGs)

Regulatory trust
Local trust
Measures of trust

Lachapelle and McCool, 2012

Wildfire planning

Adjacent communities, local NGOs
and the USDA Forest Service

Pre-existing trust character
Scale
Risk framing

Levesque et al., 2017

Vernal pool conservation

Agencies, developers, NGOs,
academics

Group trust
Organizational norms

Menzel et al., 2013

Participatory planning and river-related
planning in Switzerland

Advisory group members and
institutions

Institutional trust
Generalized trust
Social capital

Perry et al., 2017

Marine reserves in Oregon

Residents

Institutional trust

Ross et al., 2014

Water re-use in Queensland, Australia

Community members and the water
authority

Predictors of institutional trust—fairness, identity,
and credibility

Sharp et al., 2013

Wildfire management in Victoria,
Australia

Community members and fire
management agencies

Trust and trustworthiness; trust at different stages

Shindler et al., 2014

Wildfire management in Australia,
Canada, and the United States

Stakeholders and agencies

Organizational trust
Interpersonal trust
Characteristics of trustworthiness (ability, goodwill,
integrity)
Trust building

Smith et al., 2013

Public-trust resource areas in the
United States

Adjacent communities and
government agencies

Dispositional trust
Trust in government
Shared values
Moral and technical competencies

Stern and Baird, 2015

Collaborative natural resource
management generally; natural
resource management resilience

Collaborative natural resource
management participants

A “trust ecology” framework featuring dispositional,
rational, affinitive, and systems based trust

Stern and Coleman, 2015;
Coleman and Stern, 2018

Collaborative natural resource
management generally

Collaborative natural resource
management participants

Antecedents of trust
Forms of trust (dispositional, rational, affinitive,
procedural)
Psychological state of trust

Winter and Cvetkovich, 2010

Threatened and endangered species
management, conservation behaviors

Individual citizens, USDA Forest
Service

Salient values similarity and trust,
Trust alignment
Social trust

Wynveen and Sutton, 2015

Climate change behaviors to protect
coral reefs in Australia

Adjacent residents and institutions

Interpersonal trust
Institutional trust
Trust in government agencies

Yandle et al., 2011

Participation in resource management
in the New Zealand rock lobster fishery

Rock lobster industry participants
and management institutions

Institutional trust
Individual trust
Community trust

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