ABSTRACT
Within the broad field of environmental and technological risk management, one of the first researchers to examine the nature of trust and the significance of the relation between trust and risk perception was the founder of risk perception research, Paul Slovic. Drawing on work by others (for example, Bella et al, 1988; Pijawka and Mushkatel, 1991/1992; Renn and Levine, 1991; Kasperson et al, 1992) and by himself and his collaborators (Slovic et al, 1991; Flynn et al, 1992), Slovic pointed out that high public concern about a risk issue (for example, nuclear power) is associated with distrust of the managers responsible for that issue; low public concern (as in the case, for example, of medical uses of radiation) is associated with trust in risk managers (Slovic, 1993). In general, trust in risk management is negatively related to risk perception. This is an important observation because it opens a possible pathway to affecting public risk perception and improving risk management: if we understood trust, and if we could affect levels of trust, then we might also be able to affect levels of risk perception and, ultimately, risk acceptance/rejection.
