Understanding Trust and Its Implications at the Local Level

The information contained in this article is not intended as legal advice and may no longer be accurate due to changes in the law. Consult NHMA's legal services or your municipal attorney.

Imagine what’s possible in a community where there is a high level of mutual trust between residents and their local government. This is an ideal that many communities strive for but often find difficult to achieve.
Yet, it’s a powerful notion that underscores our bold experiment in democracy.

According to the Government Leadership Solutions’ 2023 State of Local Government Leadership Pipeline study, local government leaders believe trust is the biggest issue facing local governments today. Their research also shows that the ability to attract and retain talent, which is the second most significant challenge for local government, is directly connected to public trust in local government. This has a carry-through effect through which a quality, well-staffed workforce can provide better services and foster transparency, directly impacting public trust in local government. These relationships help illustrate why local government leaders believe trust is the biggest issue facing local governments today.

Survey research widely demonstrates that people tend to trust local institutions more than national ones, including government and media. However, trust is in measurable decline across the board. New Hampshire, despite its strong tradition of local governance and citizen participation, is not immune to this national trend (Mallory, 2024).

As that trend persists, the democratic ideals that inspire participatory governance, like the tradition of a town meeting, become less tenable. As a result, citizens can become progressively more removed from the decisions made by government that impact their communities and lives. However, there are ways to confront and potentially reverse this trend at the community level.

What is trust?
Trust has many definitions, but fundamentally, it is the belief in the abilities and integrity of a trustee. In a community context, there is relational trust and public trust.

Relational trust is the trust community members have in one another. It can be specific to individuals or general concerning people in the community.

Public trust is the trust community members have in public institutions and officials. It can be specific towards individual officials and entities (such as a single department) or general concerning the local government.

Aspects of Community Trust
1. Reliability: People can rely on each other to keep promises and follow through on commitments.

2. Transparency: People believe they will have access to the information they need, and there will be effective and consistent communication.

3. Competence: People trust in the abilities, competence, and knowledge of others to perform tasks well or ensure they are done well by others.

4. Good Intentions: People act in the community’s interest when expected to do so, demonstrating care for one another.

Adapted from Eriks Dunens (Hoelting, 2022)

Measuring Trust
While trust within any community is hard to measure, there are a few ways it can be observed and understood.

Social Media Networks
Local community Facebook groups and other social media networks such as Nextdoor often reveal, and potentially even exacerbate, dynamics of trust between people and their local government and with one another. These groups often blend posts about mundane topics like mail delivery mix-ups, positive and helpful posts about local happenings, and more controversial and heated conversations.

We may be able to glean insights into the level of trust in any given community by analyzing the composition of posts and how much engagement these different types of posts are receiving. Online social networks can be positive catalysts for building trust when they are used to effectively organize and solve problems in real time, share knowledge, cultivate connections, and complement a community’s physical spaces. At the same time, social networks can be negative catalysts when used to turn people against each one another, spread misinformation, and proliferate negativity.

Some communities are embracing digital engagement platforms such as Zencity and Go Vocal1 that host and analyze this conversation, facilitating community input into actionable ideas. Digital engagement platforms are designed as a more productive alternative to existing social networks and are managed by the local government as a tool for outreach and engagement.

Board Meetings
Local board meetings can provide valuable insights into community decision-making, but they can also be misleading. A common perception is that these meetings often attract disproportionate participation from individuals or groups with a vested interest in a specific issue or issues. This can mean that testimony and conversation at board meetings might not be representative of the full community. Even when citizens broadly rate their local government well, “much of what administrators hear may be complaints rather than praise since citizens and the media appear more likely to criticize than to compliment public service” (Melkers and Thomas, 1998). Sometimes seeing an unexpectedly large turnout for a meeting can signal resonance, whether positive or negative, but may also merely reflect a high degree of organization from an interest group.

But perhaps more insightful is how members of a board and municipal staff respond to and engage with those attending meetings. Is engagement more proactive, focused on educating residents and encouraging
their participation? Or is it more reactive, where local government officials are consumed with responding to complaints and controversies? There will always be some of the latter, but higher trust communities
may see more of the former than lower trust communities. Likewise, we may be able to gain insights on civic health based on local election results, namely whether proposed budgets and warrant articles are approved
or rejected.

Transparency and Access
On a related note is the degree to which local government takes steps beyond what is required to increase accessibility and boost participation. For example, does a community enable those watching a meeting remotely to testify? Is it easy or hard to find information on the town website? Are local officials friendly and welcoming to those who show up to make their voice heard, ask questions, or simply observe? Although
it sounds formal, local governments can develop on-ramps to participation. This can be as simple as sharing who to talk to, how to learn more, and what opportunities there are to participate. Those already involved
may take for granted how intimidating it can be to participate, given the rigidity of meeting procedures, the complexity of applicable statutes and ordinances, and the technical nature of local policy making.

Messaging
There may also be insights gained from looking at the attitudes of those who run for local office, and those who win those elections. Given that local government positions in New Hampshire are mostly non-partisan,
the degree to which candidates and elected officials highlight their political ideologies may yield insights on a community’s civic health. This aligns with broader trends that show a nationalizing of local politics, where messaging around issues most relevant to national politics permeate down to the local level.

According to World Bank social scientist Michael Woolcock, rather than tap into best-practice solutions adopted from elsewhere to problems determined by outsiders, it’s best to focus on locally nominated and prioritized problems as the basis for crafting the best fit for local solutions (Local Solutions for Local Problems, 2013). While this argument is made in the context of international development work, it also applies neatly
to the messaging and approach to governance of candidates for local office.

Volunteerism
Volunteerism is another indicator of trust. Are there a variety of local volunteer committees dedicated to addressing local issues, like recreation, master plans, sustainability, education, economic development, housing, energy, and specific local projects? Are there enough volunteers for these committees, and do volunteers actively participate? Are these groups and committees inclusive and welcoming to new members? Is there a group of citizens who publish a newsletter? Communities with high levels of trust are often enriched with an active culture of volunteerism.

Research from the Do Good Institute at University of Maryland finds that an increase in volunteerism seems to encourage people to do favors for their neighbors more often as well as join community groups and organizations (Dietz, 2024). The relationship between volunteerism, association, and trust appears to be strong, so in a community with a strong culture of volunteerism and association you may expect higher levels of trust, and vice versa.

Another Framework for Measuring Trust
The Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies organization, hosts Weave: The Social Fabric Project, focused on addressing what they characterize as a “crisis of broken trust” in the United States. They developed a Social Trust Index to measure trust at the local level across the country. They measure trust using three indicators: trusting behavior, trusting intentions, and trusting spaces. When you enter a zip code into their interactive map, you will see a score for each of those indicators on a scale of 0-100.
- Trusting behaviors measures people’s actions, including their membership in local institutions, volunteerism, voting, and participation in community events.
- Trusting intentions measures people’s sentiments, using surveys and social media data.
- Trusting spaces measures whether there are physical spaces to gather and connect.

Relationship Between Community Engagement and Trust
Successful community engagement leverages community input to influence and drive adoption of initiatives. The idea is simple: invite community members to participate in identifying prioritie and opportunities
and then implement solutions grounded in the feedback and ideas people shared. The theory, borne out in practice, is that community members are more likely to support initiatives when they have an opportunity to provide meaningful input and can see that the initiative is developed using that input. As Stephen M.R. Covey writes, “change happens at the speed of trust,” and as trust goes down costs increase too (Covey, 2006). Covey also coined the term “low trust tax” to describe that phenomenon.

When community engagement is strong and trust levels are high, there can be a positive feedback loop in which public officials and the community work together to solve and implement solutions. Stephen Goldsmith,
director of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University writes that “trust empowers local officials to rally public support for large, aspirational goals.” Creating more opportunities to assemble influences trust between citizens and local officials, and that trust enables productive civic discourse and allows for flexibility in policy making (Maskell, 2000). An informed citizenry is also
strongly correlated with higher trust in local government (Edelman Trust Barometer Index, 2021).

When community engagement is weak, but trust levels are high, public officials may have the ability to develop and implement solutions anyway. Public officials may identify time, money, resources, and potential
criticism as reasons to minimize community engagement (Yang, 2005). But that carries risk, because if the community later comes to disapprove of an initiative and hadn’t been meaningfully engaged to develop
and implement that initiative, trust levels may go down.

When trust levels are lower, even the most fundamental acts of governance can be strained, leaving little capacity to solve problems. If proposed annual budgets and warrant articles are routinely rejected by voters, that signals a breakdown in the feedback loop. This could mean that the community wasn’t engaged, and/or that their feedback wasn’t incorporated. In some cases, it can also signal low levels of trust.

The way in which a community is engaged can be crucial. Sometimes local officials may think they implemented strong community engagement, but the engagement strategy may have been more focused on informing
or superficially consulting their citizens rather than empowering them in the process. Especially when levels of trust are lower, “citizens often view these programs as ‘window dressing’” and refuse to participate (Yang, 2005). Even with strong engagement, voters may still reject proposals. When budgets and warrant articles are rejected, capacity to solve problems may be redirected to simply find a way to move forward on how to fund essential local functions.

Building Trust
Rebuilding trust can take years and require going above and beyond, even as community members discount or express hostility towards those efforts and even organize to undermine them. That can be deeply frustrating.

Rebuilding trust in citizens towards their local government may require public officials to trust their citizens first. Kaifeng Yang writes that local officials “are not likely to proactively implement trust-enhancing reform policies if they do not trust citizens” and “a theory of improving citizens’ trust in government is incomplete without an explanation of administrators’ trust in citizens because trust is mutual and reciprocal” (Yang, 2005). In practice, this means that local officials are welcoming, encouraging, and respectful of citizen participation, and earnestly attempt education and outreach. This is predicated on the belief that residents have valuable personal knowledge, experience, and ideas that can contribute to effective local governance.

But by taking the time to measure trust in a community and going deep to understand it at a more granular level, efforts to regain or build trust can be more successful. If using the Social Trust Index, a community may
find that there are strengths to build on and challenges to focus on and address. It’s crucial for local officials to demonstrate they are listening and showing that they understand where people are coming from.

Five Tips for Communities to Build Trust
1. Create a Welcoming and Respectful Culture: New and previously inactive residents benefit from extra effort to onboard them into the community and guide them on how to get involved. Treat all people and opinions with respect and redirect them to the most appropriate venues for participation as necessary. View questions from the public as opportunities for education and engagement.
2. Enhance Communication and Transparency: Proactively share information in various formats and ensure community members understand how they can engage with it. This requires commitment and coordination from all departments.
3. Foster Inclusive Participation: Reach out to underrepresented and underserved populations using a “meet people where they are” approach. Consider potential barriers to participation and find ways to alleviate them.
4. Weave Connections: Build connections between local organizations, businesses, and residents. Honor and value the community’s assets, seek and cultivate partnerships, and create opportunities for people to come together.
5. Demonstrate Consistency, Reliability, and Competence: Follow through on commitments and validate public input to build trust.

UNH Cooperative Extension's Community & Economic Development team helps communities design processes to address local challenges, including building public trust. Contact the author at nate.bernitz@unh.edu or 603-678-4576 to explore how to apply these ideas in your community.

View the information brief in its entirety, including full citations and recommended resources, at https://extension.unh.edu/resource/understanding-public-trust-local-level

1: Any reference to commercial products, trade names, or brand names is for information only, and no endorsement or approval is intended.