Importance de la confiance dans la gestion collective des risques de pullulation de ravageurs.

Since the 1970s, voles' outbreaks have been responsible for important damages to meadows in the Massif Central (France), threatening the economic viability of cattle breeding systems. We investigate whether trust allows enhancing collective pest management, considered as the provision of a weaker-link collective good. The main contribution of our paper is a theoretical framework we propose to consider the threshold effects related to the complexity of the studied agroecological mechanisms. We have tested this theoretical framework thanks to stylized facts we inferred from qualitative inquiries conducted with both cattle breeders and diverse institutional bodies involved in vole outbreaks management. We highlight some of the determinants of the building of trust. Breeders do not seem to trust their ability to master pullulation much. If breeders hardly trust the control methods, they do not trust either scientific and technical bodies or their neighboring breeders any better. This could explain even better the failures observed in the collective action against outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]