Trust and Cooperation in Watershed Management

Mark Lubell of Florida State University has conducted previous research demonstrating evidence of a link among trust, cooperation, and policy effectiveness in watershed management. In Lubell’s current investigation, he aims to probe deeper by asking the following questions: Does trust facilitate cooperative behavior? Is social trust between private actors more effective in producing cooperative behavior than institutional trust between private actors and the government? Does the role of trust change in different institutional contexts? What is the causal relationship between trust and behavioral expectations? To answer these questions, he again turns to watershed management because it involves private actors (farmers) and government institutions (federal, state, and local regulatory agencies) working together to improve water quality, which benefits everyone involved. To achieve a positive result, most of the farmers need to invest in new technologies to reduce harmful agricultural runoff; if only a few farmers invest, the water quality will remain unchanged. Yet if 95 percent of the farmers invest, the 5 percent who did not invest will still reap the benefits without the costs. Thus, trust plays a significant role in the endeavor. Lubell’s central hypothesis is that trust will increase cooperation, controlling for other influences such as the perceived benefits and transaction costs of cooperating. Lubell’s study will compare two different watershed management programs. The first is self-governed, unregulated, and relies on financial incentives and voluntary cooperation among the farmers. The second program is regulated by the government and relies on coercion by punishing farmers who don’t comply. Lubell hypothesizes that trust will play a smaller role in the latter program. Because the politics of watershed management are similar to other dilemmas that require the cooperation of many different stakeholders, both the findings and the methodology of this research should cross over to other policy areas. Lubell plans to publish his results as a series of articles in scholarly journals.