Public Participation and System Trust in the Process of Environmental Risk Communication

以公众参与促进信任被视为是凝聚社会认同、推动社会稳步发展的有效经验。本文考察了我国环境风险沟通中的公众参与和系统信任间的关系，研究发现：无序的弥散性参与行为抑制政府、市场和专家信任，规制性参与行为则有助于促进各系统信任；弥散性参与行为强化参与意愿对市场信任的促进作用，但弱化参与能力对媒体/社团信任的促进作用，而规制性参与行为强化参与能力对市场信任的促进作用。此外，公众对政府和市场的信任状况对他们面对风险时的反应有显著影响，对多重系统不信任可能激发人们过度的风险应对行为。因此，良好的系统信任和有效风险沟通机制的建立有助于降低由环境风险引发的社会风险，这既需要系统释放充分的公众正式参与空间，也有赖于通过有序的日常公共生活参与提高公众的参与能力和社会责任感。

This paper explores the relationship between public participation and system trust in the process of environmental risk communication. We find that disordered and diffuse participation behavior restrains the trust to government, market and expert, while formal regulative participation behavior is helpful for promoting system trust. Diffuse participation behavior strengthens the ability of participating willingness in promoting market trust but weakens the effect of participation ability on promoting media/community trust. Regulative participation behavior strengthens the effect of participation ability on promoting market trust. It is found that the trust to the government and market significantly impact people’s risk-response behaviors, while multi-system non-trust will result in excessive risk response behaviors. Therefore, it will be helpful to reduce the social risk triggered by environmental risk by building harmonious trust relationship and effective mechanism of environmental risk communication. Constructing harmonious trust relationship and effective mechanism of environmental risk communication depends on not only the social systems to effectively release the space for public participation, but also the improvement of  the public’s participation ability and social responsibility by encouraging them to participate in public life.

龚文娟

本研究是国家社科基金项目“城市公众应对环境风险的能力及行为研究”（11CSH019）的阶段性成果。

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