“Down and Dirty:” The Use and Abuse of Public Trust in Risk Communication

Many recent contributions to risk communication research stress the importance of the element of “trust” in the process of successful communication. This paper uses that theme in considering risk communication within the context of seeking consensus on matters of health and environmental risk controversies through stakeholder negotiation. It suggests that there are very good reasons, based on historical experience, for the parties to mistrust each other deeply in such settings. For example there is abundant evidence involving episodes in which risk promoters have concealed or ignored relevant risk data or simply have sought to advance their own interests by selective use of such data. These well‐established practices compound the difficulties other stakeholders face, in all such negotiation, by virtue of the inescapable uncertainties (as well as absence of needed data) inherent in risk assessments. These factors encourage the participants to treat such negotiations as poker games in which bluffing, raising the ante, and calling the perceived bluffs of others are matters of survival. In the end we should recognize the genuine dilemmas that citizens face in trying to figure out who and what to believe in making sensible decisions among the range of risks, benefits, and tradeoffs that confront us.