IngentaConnect Critical trust: understanding lay perceptions of health and safet...

Authors: Walls J.¹; Pidgeon N.¹; Weyman A.²; Horlick-Jones T.³

Source: Health, Risk & Society, Volume 6, Number 2, June 2004 , pp. 133-150(18)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

The binary opposition of trusting or not trusting is inadequate to understand the often ambiguous and contradictory ideas people possess about risk regulators, particularly when knowledge and experience of such institutions is limited. The paper reports qualitative and quantitative data from a major study of public perceptions (n = 30 focus groups) of UK risk regulators. We compare the complex and widely different 'trust profiles' of two regulatory organisations which are institutionally related (the Health and Safety Executive and the Railways Inspectorate) but very separate in the minds of our participants. The paper develops the notion of critical trust to interrogate the various ways in which people make sense of such organisations, as well as discussing the modes of reasoning that people deploy. The paper argues that views of participants are the outcome of a reconciliation of diverse perceptions concerning the role of the organisation, structural factors and the nature of the regulated risk.

Keywords: risk perception; critical trust; Health and Safety regulation

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/1369857042000219788

Affiliations: 1: Centre for Environmental Risk, School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia UK 2: Ergonomics and Work Psychology Health & Safety Laboratory Sheffield UK 3: School of Social Sciences University of Cardiff Wales

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Critical trust: understanding lay perceptions of health and safety risk regulation