Organizational Trust and Risk Communication: Trust in the EPA and Opposition to Fracking.

Political scientists have long been interested in the development of trust in social institutions. It is thought that trust supports the development of social capital, fosters participation in government, and a variety of other positive behaviors. Most of this literature, though, stages trust in government at a general level: trust in the entire system of government and entire levels of government (local, state, federal). However, we propose that trust may be held in specific administrative organizations rather than (or in addition to) systemically and that this element of trust is related to the acceptance of messages about risk technology. This paper focuses on the contribution of trust in political institutions on the acceptance of policy information. With a nationally representative public opinion survey, we have conducted a survey experiment that randomized treatments of three levels of risk and three potential messengers of risk information (including the EPA) in relation to fracking. We have found that the randomized treatment for risk intensity is a significant predictor for support for fracking but that the identity of the messenger does not matter. The results suggest that the identity of the EPA is a weak signal at the level of a specific communication. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this work for public managers who rely on public compliance or public communication to accomplish their organizations' missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]