In the Netherlands, national institutions are seen as more competent while local institutions are seen as more honest and transparent to the public, a study has found.
A group of researchers, three of whom are from the University of Groningen, examined how trust in institutions relates to public support for phasing out natural gas in the Netherlands. According to the study published in Environmental Research Communications, local institutions are seen as more honest and transparent while national ones are perceived as being more skilled and having more knowledge.
“You don’t see them in real life mostly, so they are not viewed as ‘normal people’ with regular problems,” study co-author Gonzalo Palomo-Vélez told The Northern Times.
Municipalities, however, are trusted a lot more in terms of integrity. According to the researchers, this is also important for the acceptability of projects.
“You could see the mayor in let’s say Brownies and Downeys for example. It’s a real person, so it feels closer to your problems, he might have some of the same ones,” Vélez explains.
However, municipal authorities are considered less competent. “That’s problematic because you need a little bit of both,” he added.
Without public support, problems may arise when supplying energy projects
The study’s authors said that phasing out fossil fuels is inherent to sustainable energy transitions, but implementing energy policies related to phasing out processes involves risks that may affect their public support.
They suggested that for institutions to gain the trust of people, and therefore, increase the acceptability of their policies, their strategies should focus on strengthening what people perceive each type of institution lacks.
“If you don’t get the public support of the people, sometimes big problems might arise when it comes to securing public support for certain energy projects,” Vélez explains.
According to Vélez, responsibility regarding safe energy and climate is very important now, especially regarding environmental issues. “With energy, it’s very difficult to be black and white,” he explains. But he also adds that there are ways to carry responsibility, by explaining what kind of projects are being implemented and depending on who should be doing them.
“For example in the case of Groningen, the changes must have been aimed to provide the people in the northern regions the most because they were affected the most,” Vélez said.
Because different people have different values, the institutions have to highlight all of them to get people interested. For some, this can be climate change, but for some, this can be financial benefits for example.
Because of the difference in trust between the local institutions and the government, the strategies used have to be very different, according to Vélez.
The research also shows that when people need to make a quick decision on matters they find complex, they often support the proposals by those they trust the most.
This knowledge impacts the trust level a lot, mostly in the Dutch Government. “The most important aspects of trust in the Dutch government are reliability and integrity, it is important to maintain people’s public interest in the development of policies, so you should be honest and transparent,” Vélez explains
Building such a relationship takes quite some time according to Vélez. This isn’t necessarily associated with environmental psychology at all. “In social psychology, it’s known that we are more likely to remember negative things. Even if there’s more power behind a positive action, they will then only still be at the same level as a less powerful negative one,” he said.
How does an institution like a government then build up this kind of trust again? Vélez laughs saying, “It’s actually kind of similar to relationship research”.
“For example, 10 years ago there was someone who had an extra-marital affair. They fight but find a way to move on. But then a little thing that makes the idea salient comes back to the wife’s future train of thought, and it becomes a fight again,” Vélez said.
He says that the government is similar, “It will just take time and positive actions to cancel out the negative ones.”
