Understanding Trust in Government

Environmental Sustainability, Fracking, and Public Opinion in American Politics

Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, Arnold Vedlitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315519517
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Growing disenfranchisement with political institutions and policy processes has generated interest in trust in government. For the most part, research has focused on trust in government as a general attitude covering all political institutions. In this book, Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz argue that individual agencies develop specific reputations that may contrast with the more general attitudes towards government as a whole.

Grounded in a treatment of trust as a relationship between two actors and taking the Environmental Protection Agency as their subject, the authors illustrate that the agency's reputation is explained through general demographic and ideological factors – as well as policy domain factors like environmentalism. The book presents results from two approaches to assessing trust: (1) a traditional attitudinal survey approach, and (2) an experimental approach using the context of hydraulic fracturing. While the traditional attitudinal survey approach provides traditional answers to what drives trust in the EPA, the experimental results reveal that there is little specific trust in the EPA across the United States.

Robinson, Stoutenborough, and Vedlitz expertly point the way forward for more reliable assessments of trust, while demonstrating the importance of assessing trust at the agency level. This book represents a much-needed resource for those studying both theory and methods in Public Administration and Public Policy.

1
INTRODUCTION

Trust and Fracking at a Local Forum

On August 11th, 2014, it was standing room only at the public library in Norman, Oklahoma. The library was home to a public discussion forum on the use of fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing—though we will usually refer to this by the shorter term) in the area. Proponents of the technique pointed to the opportunity to create more jobs in the area. Critics feared a range of potential problems from water consumption and contamination and the increasing frequency of earthquakes. Representatives of stakeholders, including the city of Norman, the Community Environmental Defense Council, and the leader of an EPA study on the effect of fracking, were in attendance.

By the start of the forum, the meeting room and overflow room were both filled to capacity. Crowds gathered throughout the lobby—spilling out of the doors of the library. While the audience in the library lobby could not hear the forum itself, the debate raged of its own accord. Notable in this lobby debate was an exchange between two older men. One man argued that the entire forum was a sham and that all of the officials were simply repeating the arguments of the oil and gas companies. He argued that all of the speakers had been paid off by the oil companies and they would never discuss the real costs and dangers of fracking. Another man challenged him. The second man argued that these accusations included no evidence of actual dangers of fracking and that what evidence there was was mixed and complex. When asked, the second man said he was affiliated with the local (University of Oklahoma) department of geosciences. At this, the first man laughed. The first man explained that no one from the geosciences departments should be trusted on the issue. He argued that the department had taken money from oil and gas companies and everyone affiliated with them was also suspect. It should come as no surprise that this debate did not proceed far from this point on.

This small exchange represented in microcosm the debate going on within the forum and within the broader community as a whole. The debate over fracking was complex and technical. Most of the people interested in the debates lacked the skills needed to sift through the volumes of technical reports on the effects of fracking—and the picture is not entirely clear even to those with these skills. Any argument relies on trust in the source of information on fracking. In the case of the lobby debate, the critic of fracking had so little trust in traditional sources of information (local city leaders, nonprofit leaders, and the representative of a federal agency) that he simply disregarded any information they had to offer. The contamination of evidence extended to anyone—including the second participant in the argument—that had an affiliation with an organization that had any relationship (current or past) with oil and gas companies.

One of the interesting qualities of this exchange is how specific the critic’s argument is regarding the trustworthiness of information sources—or in this case, the lack of trustworthiness—of the various representatives. The critic argued that the various representatives were untrustworthy because their association with relatively specific institutions had resulted in a conflict of interest. Understanding how people parse information about whom to trust is central to this exchange. How is it that people decide to trust sources of information—particularly official sources, such as administrative officials? What factors drive their assessments of trust? It is these questions, in the context of the debate over the regulation of fracking, that drive this book.

In this introduction, we will provide a short precis of the overall argument of the book. The following sections will connect the issues of trust in administrative agencies to broader issues of environmental sustainability and preview the argument of the book.

Environmental Sustainability and Trust in Government

It is important to take a step back to consider the broader issues that have framed the specific exchange on fracking. Growing concern about a range of environmental issues track with increasing distrust in government and the traditional mechanisms of environmental policy such as governmental regulation. Part of the skepticism about traditional policy mechanisms to address environmental concerns stems from a desire to see the interconnections between various environmental, political, and economic systems rather than problems isolated into specific issues like air or water quality. This more integrated perspective shifts from environmental protection to environmental sustainability.

Environmental sustainability is an emerging concept that promises to be of extreme importance in the coming decades. Daniel Fiorino defines the environmental sustainability perspective as“[involving] three systems: environmental, economic, and political/social systems.” (2010; s78). It is essential that each of these systems should be sustainable as well as being properly balanced in relation to each other. As a result, the sustainability concept emphasizes two other concepts that have been deemphasized in prior approaches to environmental protection. First, sustainability requires a long-term perspective, the assessment of the stability of the system to continue to operate across generations. With issues like biodiversity and climate change, one must consider the implications of policy on the present as well as many decades (even centuries) into the future. Second, the environmental sustainability concept emphasizes the connection between systems. We cannot understand environmental sustainability by studying only the toxicology of an issue. We have to consider the economic and socio-political systems as well. The integrated view of these systems places high demands on intellectual diversity but promises a much stronger foundation for understanding our ability to manage resources far into the future.

The need to connect environmental, economic, and political/social systems thrusts government organizations into the spotlight. While there is growing skepticism of traditional approaches to environmental protection and regulation, there is still an essential role for governmental organizations in an environmental sustainability approach. One can find a useful account to illustrate the importance of governmental organizations in environmental sustainability in the recent efforts by Baltimore, MD (Zeemering, 2014). Efforts to address environmental sustainability crossed many communities and many organizations. Consistent with the Fiorino definition of sustainability, policy development required the participation of environmental, economic, and political/social organizations from the region. Government organizations were not only part of this process, but often served as primary actors and as venues for discussion. In this, the government organizations became essential to the development of a shared (though diverse) image of environmental sustainability.

The role of government in coordinating efforts across diverse organizations in pursuit of social goals (in this case, environmental sustainability) suggests that scholars in public administration may have a great deal to offer. As Fiorino notes in his appeal to public administration scholars to take on the challenge of engaging issues of environmental sustainability:

Public administration starts with politics and governance, where collective choices are determined and carried out. It extends to the design and operation of economic systems. Public administration need not only be concerned about operational issues, such as raising tax revenue and managing budgets strategically, but also with the larger success of the economic system, on which the legitimacy of the political/social system ultimately relies.

(2010; s83)

It is the subject of the legitimacy of the political/social system that serves as the conceptual foundation of this book. The ability to govern environmental sustainability efforts requires the continued reputation of key actors (including governmental actors) as legitimate. Once this legitimacy is undermined, the ability of government organizations to convene actors to tackle the challenges of sustainable policy is degraded. Any understanding of the role of government in environmental sustainability efforts requires an appreciation for how these organizations are perceived by the public and other organizations—their reputations. This book investigates one reputational dimension of a particularly important federal agency in environmental sustainability efforts— trust in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA plays a vital but easily misunderstood role in our federal environmental policymaking system. The EPA stands as the singular representative of national environmental policymaking while it coordinates with state-level environmental agencies. It shares influence with a vast array of state and local actors but does not exert a great deal of unilateral authority over environmental policy. For example, the EPA can seek to induce environmental enforcement in the states with grants and other financial tools while lacking direct enforcement capacity. Nonetheless, the position of the EPA as a focal organization within the federal system is of key importance. This role of a national representative of environmental policymaking may be particularly important in emerging environmental concerns (where local efforts are looking for leadership and precedents). The EPA becomes a primary source of original information and a convener for meetings to coordinate activity (Stoutenborough and Beverlin, 2008). Even without considerable unilateral regulatory authority (as is the case in many emerging areas of environmental policy—like fracking), the EPA’s role in the environmental policy system is quite important.

The role of the EPA in representing the federal environmental policymaking is particularly important in the process of risk and environmental communication. The representative role places the EPA in front of the public on many occasions (and in regard to many controversies) where the local and state environmental agencies tend to work in relative obscurity. While lacking a great deal of unilateral authority to shape environmental policy in the states, the EPA stands for national environmental policy and is the face of this policy domain to the public. In this representative role, it is essential that the agency cultivates a sense of trust and reliability to build its reputation (and its political power) (Carpenter and Krause, 2012). This trust is particularly important in domains where scientific information is only starting to surface about the safety of practices such as relatively novel approaches to natural gas extraction.

Understanding Trust in Administrative Agencies

As the argument at the fracking forum illustrated, some issues related to environmental regulation (or its absence) bring questions about the trustworthiness of various institutions to the forefront. Information on environmental sustainability can be complex and technical. Reports on environmental impacts can depend on a nuanced understanding of the toxicology of a specific chemical or the geo-chemistry of a particular area. Statements connecting reports of medical or environmental problems to specific development activities (be they changes in watershed or, in the case of fracking, drilling operations for natural gas) require complicated statistical analysis connecting behaviors and impacts in space and time. The communication of any of this information requires trust in the provider of the information.

Distrust can cast a shadow over every part of this process. Most people possess little expertise on an issue and have to receive information from some other organization. This raises a central question in the development of environmental policy: why do people accept information from some sources and not others? In the argument at the fracking forum it was clear that the critic of the forum would not accept information from energy company sources as credible. Furthermore, he would not accept information from any person or organization affiliated in any way with these energy companies. In this sense, his lack of trust in the energy company contaminated his view of any organizations that had a financial relationship with the energy company.

In important ways, this simple example illustrates two fundamental problems in our understanding of the role of trust in political disputes (particularly in the United States). The first problem is that trust research abstracts trust in government to a large and abstract “government (as a whole)” or “government in Washington DC” or other similarly broad characterizations. The critic argued that information coming from specific sources was not credible. He believed that the interests of the energy company and the university department undermined the credibility of these organizations. For this thought process to make sense, one must accept that people have beliefs about the trustworthiness of specific institutions or organizations. Shockingly little research in trust in government has taken this step. Most research in the area has documented the decline in trust in government (as a whole) and the dynamics of this decline in relation to political and demographic characteristics. Our first motivation for this book is to demonstrate that people do hold (or withhold) trust in specific administrative organizations and not just the political system as a whole. The critic used information about a specific organization (their interest in either continued fracking activity or continued donations from energy companies) to assess the trustworthiness of each organization.

Second, there is considerable ambiguity in the nature of trust assessments. Fundamental work on trust in social relations suggests that people trust other people (or organizations, institutions, etc.) for specific purposes. One does not simply trust someone. You trust someone to do something. The existing literature has neglected the context of the trust assessment by asking questions that ignored what it is that one trusts “the government” to do. We seek to overcome these deficits in the literature by studying trust in a specific organization and in a specific context, risk communication. In adopting this context, we hope to provide insight into why it is that some people trust some organizations to provide information about environmental risks.

This book will focus on the EPA as an organization that individuals can choose to trust (or not). The EPA serves as an important actor in a wide variety of activities related to environmental sustainability and environmental protection. If the federal government is to succeed in coordinating efforts to improve environmental sustainability, it will have to include the EPA. It is likely important, then, for the EPA to cultivate a reputation of trustworthiness to ease the coordination of actors. A challenge they face is that people in the United States vary widely in their level of trust in the EPA.

The core research question of the book is how trust in the EPA varies. First, we establish that trust in the EPA does not simply mirror more general beliefs in the trustworthiness of the government as a whole. If, for example, trust in the EPA was related entirely to party identification, one would find that trust in the EPA was completely explained by trust in the government as a whole. What we find is that trust in the EPA is related to trust in government as a whole but that it also has its own dynamics. Even when controlling for trust in government as a whole, the EPA has its own reputation that responds to different factors than those that drive trust in government as a whole. Most dramatically, issue-specific beliefs about environmental policy are important contributors to the dynamics of trust in the EPA. This speaks to the specificity of the reputation of the EPA and the importance of understanding the dynamics of trust in this (and presumably other) specific administrative agencies.

Second, we adopt a novel, alternative method for assessing trust in an administrative agency. We use data from a survey experiment to assess trust in the EPA in the context of fracking risk assessment. In brief, respondents were randomly assigned a source for a specific risk assessment of fracking (the EPA being one of the sources). We will illustrate that the EPA was no more trusted than the other sources when it came to these risk assessments. This draws into question the functional importance of reported trust in the EPA (or trust in government in general, for that matter). We further drill down to find specific sub-populations in which there are different levels of trust in the EPA. Overall, we will illustrate that accepting information from the EPA (an act reflecting trust) does not correlate with all of the same factors that direct statements of trust do.

What Follows

The book builds its argument in the following way. First, it reviews the existing literature on trust in government and the reputations of administrative agencies. This review supports a new theory of trust in administrative agencies based on a broad sociological understanding of trust. It is this theory that motivates the empirical chapters of the book. The empirical chapters address the evidence for the importance of demographic, political/ideological, and policy domain-specific predictors of trust in the EPA.

Each empirical chapter (after a general introduction) includes two approaches to assess the predictors of trust in the EPA. The first is a traditional approach identifying correlates of respondent characteristics and attitudes with statements about trust in the EPA as a source of information. The second approach is a novel experimental approach that presents a robust, challenging test of whether people respond to a potential piece of information as if they trust the EPA—without eliciting a direct attitude related to trust in the EPA. We have the most confidence in those predictors of trust in the EPA that operate in both the traditional and the experimental tests. The book concludes with a discussion that con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Perspectives on Trust in Government
• 3 A Theory of Trust in Administrative Agencies
• 4 Assessing trust in the EPA
• 5 Building a Model of Trust in the EPA
• 6 Demographics and Trust in the EPA
• 7 Political Attitudes and Trust in the EPA
• 8 Issue-Specific Attitudes and Trust in the EPA
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix A: The Energy Policy Survey Instrument
• Index