Hazard Manager Stereotypes as Influences on Trust, Confidence and Cooperation

Citizens' trust in hazard-managing organizations is important both as a marker of institutional performance in a democratic society, and as a condition for achievement of certain performance goals of the organization. Understanding the factors influencing trust has theoretical as well as practical implications, but research in this area to date has tended to focus on situation-specific factors. Given the unfamiliarity of most hazard-managing organizations and hazard topics to most citizens, citizens' stereotypes of the institutions to which these organizations belong may be an important influence particularly where situation-specific information is unavailable or people are unmotivated to see it. The goals of this research were to assess stereotypes of major societal institutions (e.g., government, business, nonprofits, federal government agencies, corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups), how these stereotypes compare to judgments on similar attributes of specific familiar and unfamiliar organizations, the degree to which stereotypes influence trust in specific organizations in specific hazard management situations, and whether organization communications based on varied approaches to stereotypical attributes affect trust. The outcome will be a better appreciation of the degree to which institutional stereotypes contribute to trust judgments of hazard-managing organizations, and whether such organizations can improve their trustworthiness by communicating about how they embody or flout stereotypical attributes.