IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijgenv/v8y2008i1-2p30-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Too much trust in (social) trust? The importance of epistemic concerns and perceived antagonism

Author

Listed:
  • Lennart Sjoberg
  • Misse Wester Herber

Abstract

Social trust has often been claimed to be an important determinant of perceived risk, a finding that, if true, has important consequences for risk communication. However, the empirical basis of the alleged relationship between social trust and risk perception is weak. Previous work has pointed to other facets of trust as being more important: trust in science and technology per se (epistemic trust) as well as belief in the existence of opposed interests and goals (antagonism). In the present paper, these notions are further developed and empirically tested on data on trust (social and epistemic), risk perception, attitudes, voting intentions, trust and antagonism in siting a local high-level nuclear waste repository. Data were obtained in the spring of 2005 from two Swedish municipalities where site investigations were being carried out in preparation for building a repository for spent nuclear fuel. It was found that social trust had less weight in perceived risk than epistemic trust and perceived antagonism. Similar results were obtained when the dependent variables were attitude to the repository, and intention to vote pro or con a local repository in a future local referendum on the issue. Implications of the findings for risk communication are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Lennart Sjoberg & Misse Wester Herber, 2008. "Too much trust in (social) trust? The importance of epistemic concerns and perceived antagonism," International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(1/2), pages 30-44.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijgenv:v:8:y:2008:i:1/2:p:30-44
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=17258
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Modin & Sven Hansson, 2011. "Moral and Instrumental Norms in Food Risk Communication," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 101(2), pages 313-324, June.
    2. Patricea Elena BERTEA & Ana MIHEI, 2014. "Social Trust – Differences And Similarities Between Eastern European Countries," EURINT, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 1, pages 29-37.
    3. Timothy C. Earle, 2010. "Trust in Risk Management: A Model‐Based Review of Empirical Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 541-574, April.
    4. Longji Hu & Rongjin Liu & Wei Zhang & Tian Zhang, 2020. "The Effects of Epistemic Trust and Social Trust on Public Acceptance of Genetically Modified Food: An Empirical Study from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(20), pages 1-20, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijgenv:v:8:y:2008:i:1/2:p:30-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=14 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.