Trust in advisors: Origins, effects, and implications for risk communication

Harvey, Nigel (2017). Trust in advisors: Origins, effects, and implications for risk communication. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: Economic and Social Research Council. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-850006

Data description (abstract)

It is now well recognised that trust in sources of advice is important for effective risk communication. To maintain some influence over peoples opinions and risk-taking behaviours, government departments, medical bodies and other agencies must endeavour to maintain the trust that people have in them. When trust is lost, so is influence. As an example of this, commentators have pointed to effects of poor advice during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) crisis. The government assured people that it was safe to eat beef but later this behaviour was later linked to a brain disease that is always fatal. This reduced trust in the government as a source of advice about risk for many people. As a result, there appears to be a reluctance to take government advice on other matters. For example, the number of measles cases has increased in many parts of the country: fewer people are having their children vaccinated against the disease because they do not believe the governments assurances that the MMR vaccine is safe. Recently, Onora ONeill, in her 2002 Reith lectures, has argued that we should be cautious about accepting peoples claims that they have lost trust in some agency as evidence that they have actually lost their trust in it. For example, she suggests that many people who say they no longer trust supermarket food still shop in supermarkets rather than elsewhere. For her, it is important to make a distinction between stated trust and actual trust. Our aim is to find out more about trust by answering a number of questions about it while keeping ONeills distincion in mind. What determines trust? How should it be measured? Does it have similar effects on peoples estimates about levels of risk and their risk-related behaviours? How valid is the view that it is easier to destroy than to create trust? Is trust in advisors modified in a rational way? If not, what determines how it is modified? Does trust (or lack of it) transfer across domains? Answers to these questions should be relevant to many of the concerns of those responsible for the development of effective risk communication strategies in government, business and non-profit-making organizations. This is a proposal for systematic studies to answer these questions. In simulated situations, people will be required to assess levels of risk associated with various hazards on the basis of information received from advisors. Advice will be attributed to different sources, such as government departments and consumer organizations. Its quality will be under our control. We shall be able to measure actual trust in an advisor (in terms of the degree to which peoples own risk judgments depend on the risk estimate provided by that advisor) and stated trust in that advisor (in terms of a trust rating). We shall be able to determine how these measures depend on quality of previous advice from that source and on other variables, such as the degree to which judges perceive their values to be similar to those of the advisor

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