ABSTRACT
Deferring to trusted others who may seem to know more or who belong to trusted organizations may help guide citizens on their choices where their own detailed analyses might not be possible or where the costs of gaining their own information for such analyses may be quite high. This chapter builds towards a model of why respondents report trust in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an example of a potential information source on complex environmental issues. It takes the first steps in looking at whether or not the EPA is viewed as a trusted agency. While theory and logic may provide some indication of causality, it is not entirely clear that these predictors will hold their own when examined in combination with the others. The full multivariate analysis of trust in the EPA is discussed. The chapter concludes with a unified model to assess the influence of demographic, political/ideological, and issue-specific factors on trust in the EPA.
