Abstract
Discipline and context specific inquiries into the nature and dynamics of trust are beginning to give way to cross-boundary understandings which seek to outline its more consistent elements. Of particular note within these is an argument that trust is premised on vulnerability; that it has an important nexus with assessments of the ability, benevolence, and integrity of the trust target; and that it can also be motivated. The current work seeks to shed preliminary light on the applicability of this argument to a context in which it has not previously been examined: community-based water management in southwestern Uganda. Using a deductive, theory-driven analysis of focus group discussions with residents, we show that when our participants were simply asked to discuss their relationships with local management committees, vulnerability, ability, benevolence, and integrity consistently emerged as salient themes. Motivation, however, emerged as most salient for women. Further analysis suggests that this may have been because women are more directly involved in water provision, thereby increasing their perceived need for the resource. Our results, therefore, lend credence to the cross-boundary nature of this increasingly nuanced theoretical understanding of trust but also suggest some general guidance for improving community-based resource management efforts by providing preliminary evidence regarding the relative roles of trustworthiness and motivation.
Highlights
IntroductionTrust is often understood to be specific to the individuals involved and to the specific context in which their relationship is situated
Understanding the nature and dynamics of trust is an important goal of an ever-growing body of scholarly and practical efforts. Hardin (2001) argues that trust always involves three elements—a trustor (A), a target of that trust (B), and the context in which the relationship between A and B occurs—such that changes in any one of these elements fundamentally change the trust at issue.Vulnerability, Trustworthiness, and MotivationTrust is often understood to be specific to the individuals involved and to the specific context in which their relationship is situated
The current research builds upon this work, focusing on three elements of trust that have been supported in a wide variety of contexts to understand their applicability to a new context of significant practical import, that of community-based water management in southwestern Uganda
Summary
Trust is often understood to be specific to the individuals involved and to the specific context in which their relationship is situated. This particularity has fostered a fragmented literature such that scholars interested in a given relationship tend to focus on only that relationship and typically from the perspective of their own disciplinary lenses (e.g., the study of government and the governed in political science, the study of the police and their communities in criminal justice, the study of news media and its consumers in communication). We seek to understand whether the themes that emerge from focus group discussions (FGDs) about trust in the committees responsible for managing community boreholes are consistent with the postulation that cross-boundary trust is premised on vulnerability, that it has an important nexus with assessments of the ability, benevolence, and integrity of the target, and that it can be motivated
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