The geography of trust: understanding differences in perceptions of risk, water resources, and regional development

ABSTRACT

This article draws on cultural theory of risk to explore public perceptions of trust in groups that provide information about water in the Reno-Sparks region of northern Nevada, USA. We survey 474 respondents, and using mixed-methods analysis, critically examine perceptions of trust in 12 sources to provide accurate information about water resources. Factor analysis reveals that respondents shared similar values of trust in several sources, which we categorize as: elected local officials, ancillary safeguards, local water and sanitation utilities, and supplemental sources. We then explored subregional variation in trust and local context, gleaned from open-ended responses. In conclusion, we find in the Reno-Sparks region as a whole there is general mistrust in elected local officials, however these perceptions are complicated by local context with some subregions more trusting than others.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural theory
• risk perception
• trust
• mixed-methods
• reclaimed water
• factor analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the study participants for their contribution to this research and The University of Nevada, Reno for providing the research funding to cover the costs of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 One simple approach is to select the number of components with an Eigenvalue greater than one. There were four in our study. The second approach is to plot the Eigenvalues against the component numbers on a scree plot, identifying the location at which there is a clear inflection point that indicates adding additional components adds only marginal additional variance explained. This inflection point also occurs at component four.