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domain of biosecurity risks. In the autumn of 2013, when it
became clear that ash trees were vulnerable to the spread
of the Chalara fraxinea pathogen to the United Kingdom,
government and society alike did not anticipate the strong
media and political focus on the issue that would follow.
Pidgeon and Barnett have documented how a range of
cultural and institutional factors underlay this controversy 37 .
Climate change, on the other hand, has long been recognized
to be an ‘attenuated’ hazard 38 , a risk where people are often
resistant to the scientific evidence of its gravity precisely
because many of the proposed solutions will threaten some
of our most deeply held values regarding the relationship
between society, lifestyles and economic growth. This again
of creating multi-stakeholder scenarios — stories
about the future that bring together different actors
and decision-makers with diverse perspectives and
expertise. Part of the answer may lie in rethinking our
approach to narrative in this context. For effective
public engagement we need not just one, but many,
simultaneous story-tellings, told not just once, but
many times.
We tend to trust people
who share our values or
are members of our own
social group, especially
when information about
a risk is either uncertain
or sparse.
points to the importance of constructing the right narratives
about risk to address such deep-seated value-based and
identity issues (see case study on climate change).
Risk Perception and Trust
The past 20 years have seen a surge in interest in the
role of trust in people’s responses to environmental and
technological risks, from both the academic and policy
community. In Europe, the crisis over bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) in particular was seen as an event
that reduced public trust in risk management processes.
Accordingly, rebuilding trust in the science policy
process through processes of public engagement and
transparency has been a core policy objective of public risk
communication and stakeholder engagement processes 39 .
The question of trust and risk perception is not a new
one, however. As early as 1980, the sociologist Brian
Wynne 40 argued that differences between expert and lay
views of risk might depend upon the public’s evaluation
of the trustworthiness of risk management, and of the
authorities to act both in the public interest and with regard
to best possible technical standards and practice. And
indeed one interpretation to be placed upon several of the
qualitative dimensions of risk identified in the psychometric
studies (for example, control over risk, equity of impacts,
whether a risk is known to science etc.) is that they tap
more fundamental value concerns about the institutional
processes of hazard management. Such concerns are not
strictly divorced from the hazard process itself, either.
We have to trust risk management and managers to keep
modern risks (transportation, energy systems, environmental
stressors) within acceptable bounds, and any evidence of a
failure to fulfil such a duty means that the risk might indeed
be more serious than we thought.
Survey studies have repeatedly shown that trust in risk
managing institutions is positively correlated with the
acceptability of various technological and environmental
risks. For example, with the exception of gender (see above),
most socio-demographic and ideological variables are only
weakly related to concern about a potential nuclear waste
repository or nuclear power, while trust variables have
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