Despite the long-recognized importance of trust in the natural resources management literature, few have drawn upon the breadth of other disciplines' investigations of trust to inform their work. This article represents an effort to break down the concept of trust into its component parts in an attempt to reorganize trust theory in a robust and practical way for collaborative natural resource management. We describe four forms of trust relevant to collaborative (and other forms of) natural resource management: dispositional trust, rational trust, affinitive trust, and procedural trust. By delineating different forms of trust, their antecedents, and their potential consequences for collaborative natural resource management, we aim to provide a useful and consistent lexicon and framework for use by researchers and practitioners in the human dimensions of natural resource management.

The authors explored the influences of 3- and 5-day residential environmental education programs at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont (TN) on participants' connections with nature, environmental stewardship, interest in learning and discovery, and awareness of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and biodiversity. The authors found significant positive, short-term effects on all outcomes of interest. Also, 3-month delayed posttests indicated retention of significant gains in environmental stewardship and awareness, whereas other gains faded. Longer stays and active engagement of visiting teachers in on-site instruction enhanced most outcomes. The authors discuss the influences of previsit preparation and group size on participants.

SUMMARY: Protected areas (PAs) have long struggled to successfully enforce compliance with their regulations. Even some of the best-funded PAs in the world face shortcomings in using enforcement as an effective deterrent to PA opposition. This suggests that traditional enforcement on its own may be insufficient for effective resource protection. Research was undertaken to understand why some would-be offenders refrain from harmful actions toward neighbouring national parks while others do not. Perceptions of the trustworthiness of PA managers were the most consistent predictors of exercised restraint on behalf of those living within the immediate vicinities of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Virgin Islands National Park and Podocarpus National Park. These trust assessments were most commonly based upon respondents' perceptions of positive personal interactions between PA managers and the public, of PA managers' receptiveness to local input, of the benefits and disadvantages associated with PA presence, and of PA officials' effective performance of their duties and equitable treatment of different groups. The study reveals trust and legitimacy as key factors related to voluntary compliance in situations where general agreement with PA regulations does not necessarily exist and provides insight into how trust and legitimacy can be developed or eroded.

Stern, M. J., and T. Baird. 2015. Trust ecology and the resilience of natural resource management institutions. Ecology and Society 20(2): 14.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07248-200214

This article presents a model based on empirical research for explaining local opposition toward neighboring protected areas. Analyses of data from 420 semistructured interviews with local residents and nearly 1 year of participant observation around three national parks (Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA, Virgin Islands National Park, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Podocarpus National Park, Ecuador) reveal that common assumptions about local residents as primarily motivated by rational economic stimuli are, at best, incomplete. Rather, the research reveals local distrust for park managers to be the most consistent predictor of active opposition toward neighboring national parks, overshadowing traditional rational assessments of the benefits and disadvantages associated with park presence among other factors. The research compares the relative explanatory power of different pathways leading toward park opposition and examines how perceptions of trustworthiness are developed.