The Role of Trust in the Participatory Establishment of Protected Areas—Lessons Learnt from a Failed National Park Project in Switzerland

Abstract

This article explores the reasons for the local rejection of a proposed national park in Switzerland. Using a mixed-methods approach and resorting to qualitative and quantitative data, we follow the thread of trust issues in the participatory planning process of a protected area. Different rationales and discourses, both project-specific but also more general, influenced the opinions of local stakeholders. Connecting these different opinions was the issue of (dis)trust, which weaves in and out of prominent lines of argumentation and informs individual sentiments. The application of a multidimensional trust framework helps to understand the influence of different types of trust on protected area negotiations. We discuss how a focus on rational trust building can help to sharpen the diverse goals of contemporary protected areas with integrated conservation and economic development schemes, as well as enable the emergence of other types of trust to facilitate conservation debates.