This project proposes and tests a theoretical model of institutional confidence that will be evaluated in the context of water regulatory institutions. This institutional confidence theory posits that changes in knowledge of and experiences with governmental institutions will affect not only levels of confidence in the institution, but also the bases used to make institutional confidence judgments. The central hypothesis is that people rely on different factors to determine their trust and confidence in a specific institution, depending on their extent of knowledge and experience with that institution. Thus, it is hypothesized that when a person has limited experience with and knows little about an institution, institutional confidence assessments will be driven by one's general disposition to trust. As one gains knowledge and experience, perceptions of the institution's trustworthiness will determine institutional confidence. With more experience, stable attitudes of loyalty or cynicism will increasingly account for confidence judgments. The methods used to test the theory are 1) validation of measures of water-related institutional constructs on two different samples; 2) a cross-sectional, community study of institutional confidence in water-regulatory institutions; and 3) a longitudinal study of confidence in water institutions.
The project is one of the first programs of research to focus on confidence in institutions that regulate water resources. These studies will provide an understanding of what specifically drives confidence attitudes and perceptions in water-related, governmental institutions. Important implications of this research include 1) effective governance for water-related institutions, given that trust and confidence in government has been shown to be associated with compliance and acceptance of governmental decisions; and 2) application to other governance contexts, such as courts and municipalities, two other governmental institutions previously studied by the research team.
