Introduction

Trust and Risk Management/Risk Communication

Trust has been identified as an important component in examinations of public response in risk situations (Siegrist 2000, Siegrist and others 2000). Examinations of trust of publics in fire-management agencies have also been applied to fire-management issues (Cvetkovich and Winter 2004, Liljeblad and Borrie 2006, Shindler and others 2004, Winter and others 2002, Winter and others 2004). General trends towards trust (Winter 2003) and distrust (Liljeblad and Borrie 2006, Winter and others 2003) have been presented. Trust seems to be target specific and situation specific and involves degree of risk and perceived impacts (Kneeshaw and others 2004, Langer 2002, Winter and others 2004). Trust has been documented as an essential component of effective communication surrounding risk management (Covello and others 1986, Freudenberg and Rursch 1994, Johnson 2004, Slovic 2000). Those who trust the source of a communication about risk are more likely to believe the communicated message and more likely to accept initiatives designed to address the risk, including actions they must take themselves.

Past Studies on Values, Trust, and Natural Resource Management

A series of studies examining the interactions between salient values similarity and trust has been conducted. Across these studies, salient values similarity has been a significant predictor of public trust in the Forest Service (FS) to address a number of natural resource management issues including a proposed program of research (Cvetkovich and others 1995), a recreation fee demonstration program (Winter and others 1999), and acceptance of approaches to management of threatened and endangered species (Cvetkovich and Winter 1998, Cvetkovich and Winter 2003, Winter and Knap 2001). Other significant influences that have been explored in conjunction with this line of inquiry include community of interest and place, ethnicity, gender, concern, and knowledge about the target topic. In one study (Cvetkovich and Winter 2003), participants repeatedly raised the issue of consistency between Forest Service actions and similar salient values. From this we built a pair of items and tested them with publicsregarding issues of endangered species management (Winter and Cvetkovich 2003) and fire management (Winter and Cvetkovich, in press). We confirmed that consistency and validity of inconsistency are instrumental in further understanding patterns of trust and distrust among publics. These findings are outlined in greater detail elsewhere (Cvetkovich and Winter 2004). However, the study of attitudes towards fire and fire management (Winter and Cvetkovich, in press) involved random samples of residents residing in four Southwestern States, including those with little direct experience with fire.

Values and Trust in a Fire-Prone Community

Variation in degree of experience with fire is undeniably an important consideration. It may be that direct experience represents an opportunity to develop greater personal knowledge about fire, which, based on past work, would then be expected to reduce the reliance on trust in making judgments about fire management issues (Siegrist and others 2000). Another explanation may be that trust has been blurred with issues centered on direct experience and reflects confidence rather than assessments of trust (Cvetkovich and Winter, in press; Earle and others 2001; Siegrist and others 2003).