Abstract
Trust, defined as a willingness of one entity (e.g., stakeholders) to be vulnerable to the discretionary actions of another (e.g., a wildlife management agencies), is a key attribute of effective environmental management. A lack of clarity about which factors matter most in developing and sustaining trust creates an impediment to good governance. Our objective was to derive a set of antecedents of trust from research reported in peer-reviewed literature in natural resource and environmental science, management and policy domains. We conducted a meta-analysis of the relationships between trust and seven antecedents: reputation, communication, shared norms and values, cooperation/support, negative past behaviors, satisfaction with/quality of services, and fairness. We also examined whether relationships between antecedents and trust differ depending on whether the target of trust is a specific person or the organization as an entity, as well as whether the relationship with the referent of trust is horizontal (i.e., between natural resource agencies partnering together) or vertical (i.e., between stakeholders and agencies). Results provide estimates of relationships between each antecedent and trust, as well as the relative importance of the antecedents in predicting trust. We conclude by evaluating the state of the literature on trust and providing recommendations for future research.
Highlights
A growing need exists for natural resource organizations to enhance relationships with myriad stakeholders involved in governance of the environment (Decker et al, 2016)
Of the seven antecedents identified in the table, reputation (ρ = 0.66), cooperation and support (ρ = 0.59), shared norms and values (ρ = 0.58), and communication were strong correlates (ρ = 0.57)
There is growing evidence that trust is crucial for effective, efficient management of natural resources (Cvetkovich and Winter, 2003; Henry and Dietz, 2011; Stern and Baird, 2015)
Summary
A growing need exists for natural resource organizations to enhance relationships with myriad stakeholders involved in governance of the environment (Decker et al, 2016). Building and sustaining those relationships is a challenging endeavor (Davenport et al, 2007; Metcalf et al, 2015). In regards to agency or inter-organizational collaborations, trust has been described as the “willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence” (Ganesan, 1994) and “the degree of confidence partners have in the reliability and integrity of each other” (Aulakh et al, 1996). Dependability, benevolence, and credibility (Zaheer and Venkatraman, 1995; Zaheer and Harris, 2006)
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