Trust in Risk Management: Uncertainty and Scepticism in the Public Mind

Description

Trust is an important factor in risk management, affecting judgements of risk and benefit, technology acceptance and other forms of cooperation. In this book the world's leading risk researchers explore all aspects of trust as it relates to risk management and communication. The authors draw on a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and empirical case studies on topics such as mobile phone technology, well-known food accidents and crises, wetland management, smallpox vaccination, cooperative risk management of US forests and the disposal of the Brent Spar oil drilling platform. The book integrates diverse research traditions and provides new insights into the phenomenon of trust, including the factors that lead to the establishment and erosion of trust. Insightful analyses are provided for researchers and students of environmental and social science and professionals engaged in risk management and communication in both public and private sectors.

Michael Siegrist is Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Timothy C. Earle is a Research Associate at Western Washington University, Bellingham, US. Heinz Gutscher is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

An excellent collection of texts that can be recommended both to researchers and to others interested in cooperative risk management... Siegrist, Earle, Gutscher and their contributors have produced a well-written and finely edited book that improves the understandings of the relationships between trust, risk and uncertainty in cooperative risk management.' Journal of Risk Research 'Given the importance of trust as a factor in risk communication studies, this book offers both communication scholars and their students an excellent conceptual resource.' Science Communication '[A]n excellent introduction into the great variety of trust studies' Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 'Everyone knows that trust is important in managing environmental and technological risks, yet there is little agreement on the nature of trust and how to study it. Siegrist, Earle and Gutscher convinced leading American and European scholars to write twelve original essays to try to make sense of the origins and consequences of the uncertainty and scepticism common in the public mind. Although the authors use different methods, conceptual frameworks, models and theories, they all write with fervour (perhaps reflecting the importance of the topic), but maintain the highest standards of scholarship. The chapters complement each other so that the value of this book is greater than the sum of the individual chapters. Indispensable to anyone concerned with trust in cooperative risk management.' Robert E. O'Connor, National Science Foundation