Trust and trustworthiness: conceptual distinctions and their implications for natural resources management

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Few natural resource management (NRM) studies discriminate between trust and trustworthiness. However, this approach, which combines the attitude of one actor with the characteristics of another actor, is common in the organisational management literature. Our case study, set in a wildfire management context in Australia, sought to explore: (1) how community members and NRM staff defined trust and described trustworthiness; (2) how these trust definitions did, or did not, reflect conceptualisations in the literature; and, (3) whether explicitly differentiating between trust and trustworthiness is useful in an NRM context. Our findings suggest that participants defined trust in three main ways: as 'having a good relationship'; as 'being able to rely on others' in a one-way manner; and, as 'a relationship where parties rely on one another' in a reciprocal manner. Our findings also suggest that participants differentiated these trust definitions from trustworthiness, that is, from the characteristics and actions which made an individual or agency worthy of trust. These findings suggest that it is useful to differentiate trust from trustworthiness, because it allows NRM managers and researchers to better understand both the trusting intentions of community members and the characteristics of the agency which contribute to that trust. 1. Introduction It is generally agreed that trust is important in building and maintaining positive relationships between natural resource management (NRM) agencies and communities impacted by management actions and plans. Relationship-building is critical, because many environmental planning processes involve considerable complexity and controversy stemming from the need to balance the multiple values and competing interests of diverse stakeholders (Treffny and Beilin 2011, LaChapelle and McCool 2012). Indeed, trust has been identified as an integral component of effective collaboration (Beunen and de Vries 2011, Cooke et al. 2012) and public participation …