Trust and Fairness in the Management of Environmental Hazards

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A primary role of government agencies, such as those that responsible for the management of environmental risks, is to mediate among competing private interests, following fair, neutral procedures. To be effective, however, the procedures used by government agencies need not only to be objectively fair (i.e., meet accepted normative standards of fairness), they must be perceived as fair, accepted as being fair by the competing stakeholders. Although most government agencies invest large amounts of resources in objectively fair procedures (e.g., by insuring that all interested parties have opportunities to express their views on an issue), there is growing evidence that what is presumed to be objectively fair is often perceived to be unfair. This is the case, in particular, when members of the public believe that issues of great moral importance are at stake. When the outcomes of decisions violate the moral standards of stakeholders, then the procedures that produced the outcomes, whatever their objective properties, are likely to be judged to be unfair and illegitimate.This project is designed to explore the effectiveness of fair procedures in environmental risk management, an arena often characterized by the clash of morally significant values. Our approach is based on an analysis of the relations between trust and fairness. According to our formulation, the basis for trust between individuals (or between a person and an agency or its representative) is a feeling that important values are shared, that they are joined by a common social bond. It is this common bond that legitimizes the ways that members of the group solve problems. According to this view fairness is socially defined within groups, as opposed to being objectively defined across groups. In brief summation, fairness depends on the prior establishment of trust. Experimental surveys of general populations in both the United States and Switzerland will carried out to test our understanding of trust and fairness. Support for our approach would provide vital insight into how stakeholder involvement in environmental decision making-and democratic processes in general-could be made more effective, efficient, and fair.