Jasper de Vries has published a number of articles on this topic that might be interesting. 

Article Trust related dynamics in contested land use: A longitudinal...

Article The pivot points in planning: How the use of contracts influ...

Thank you very much Prof Beunen. These are very good materials you have provided.

Assiama send prof Beunens articles to me

It may depend on the community and what you are trying to accomplish.  A resource that my be of interest is The Community Toolbox.  They have a toolkit that has a component on "Creating and Maintaining Partnerships".  You can access it here:  http://ctb.ku.edu/en/toolkits.

Direct, participatory, substantive, grassroots-driven planning [cf my research publications, there are various peer-reviewed publications under this rubric].

Best wishes with your research

Paulo Freire in 1965 in his book the Pedagogy of the oppressed discuss conscientization as a means of gaining community trust and acceptance, whereas Robert Chambers discussed participatory development planning, go back and look at participatory planning where the external actor is a facilitator while the community members contribute ideas and design programs and plans to implement such project  using their community resources raised by community members. In carrying out this type of project, the participatory appraisal, which is popularly known as community based participatory approach. these methods, community members are conscientized on the problems which seems to hinder their development guided by the external actor, they are now informed and they now suggest various solutions to make the problem and then they can become dependent and also identify and share responsibilities towards achieving such community goals. 

I think paraphrase it, will help as well.

A framework for optimising / (optimizing) value in collaborative natural resource governance.

Re-word: For natural resources to be established, there is an effective outline between governments, which is common on local and national levels.

Listening is the most important thing outsiders can do. Then, ask clarifying questions-- people on the ground know a great deal.   

As per practual experience,  the most important element is community ownership.  Improving community ownership leads to better project understanding,  locall contribution, low dispute resulting sustainable development. 

Community empowerment relationship with sustainable development is moderated by community ownership 

For more details message me 

Regards 

Dr. M. Shakil Ahmad 

By submitting issues applying sequential choice and fund voting, cf. chapter VII. Caring about democracy in my book Democracy with sequential choice and fund voting.

Work on 'developing that trust before your actually start your project/research. If people are absolutely clear about the intentions and purposes of what you are doing, they will support and trust you. Usually, people want to know how the project or research will benefit them directly or indirectly. IIf they see the usefulness of what you are trying to do in very clear terms, they will trust and support your work.

It might sound too simple but RESPECT is the approach. You need the community and you want to learn from them. 

It's helpful when considering this question to recognise there that are different types of trust. For instance, Graham (2014) (A new perspective on the trust power nexus from rural Australia. Journal of Rural Studies 36:87-98) distinguishes 'competence trust' from ‘goodwill trust’. Competence trust involves trust that another party has the capacities (eg, knowledge and skills) required to honour a commitment, whereas goodwill trust is trust that another party is actually motivated to honour the commitment.

Likewise, vertical and horizontal types of trust can be distinguished, where horizontal trust may exist (or not) between parties at the same level of a governance arrangement, and vertical trust may exist (or not) between parties at different levels of a governance arrangement. The question we are responding to here appears to relate to vertical trust between a public agency and community members.

My book Economics for Collaborative Environmental Management: Renegotiating the Commons might be relevant to this topic.

Hi Emmanuel :

I want to start saying that your question is relevant for me.

It is a complex topic. However I can remark some aspects:

I think that the first contact and the convocatory are key aspects. How do you arrives to the community, who is introducing you into their space, their lands, their territory. Is a person loved or respected by the community. As more you can control this aspect, you'll start with a better "first step".

How much do you know about the community where you want to be "accepted and believed", what are your sources about this knowledge?

What are your real, your really honest goals and reasons to interact with the people of a community. If you must avoid to share some reasons or goals, and you must hide them, then It have no sense to talk about: how to win the "local people trust".

For me this aspects are valid for individuals, teams and institutions.

I'm sorry for my limited english and I hope to give you some useful ideas.

Leopoldo Medina

Graham usefully reminds us that the idea of trust can operate along many different axes spreading out from the giver of that trust which is sought.   Perhaps, in reality, there are as many of these axis as there are external institutions which will intersect with those of the  'trust giver'.  There is likely to be far more of these than even perhaps the trust giver has equivalents.  Most will only be identified after the intrusions that are desired have shown themselves through their negative consequences.

The question, that is raised by even those few axes of relationship that Graham has studied, begs the question of joint 'culpability'?   Any external society, in our paradigm, of which any one, or just a few, institutions might seek to gain the trust of a 'target group', can never do so except at a level of conscious 'acceptable hypocrisy' in their own eyes.  Why?  Because within our own societies none can guarantee or deliver a consistent and unified initiative towards any project which can also be guaranteed to be both successful and sustained so long as that target group survives and which will also deliver no 'damage' to any one of the target groups personal perceptions of well-being.

In such situations, 'We' are always proselytising moral philosophers and teachers of a political economy and of the set of life goals, methods, morals and social institutions which our unswerving belief in its dogmas require us to endow upon others, whether they like 'all of it' or not, in every society not yet as 'lucky' as we like to believe that we are.  Yet we have known for decades that this wonderful paradigm of ours is built upon a lie about ourselves which cannot even claim to be a useful stylistic device when it comes to the predictive power of the models we build using it and the policies that we impose on each other in their name.  Not is it able to deliver those goals which its public relations organs claim for it.  The science and the data only show opposite negative consequences, except for an increasingly well-provided decreasing few.

My advice... if you want to build enduring trust between a 'target group' that you wish to help and develop by 'bringing them in to our world' then I would suggest that you first explain to them these facts and that we don't actually know how it all works, but that if they think they all might be happy with losing 'their time' when working within it, and starving to death and suffering ill-health when not working... having lost all access to anything they might work with by themselves so that they might still be able to live when not 'working' (.. for us?)... then you will be happy to help them to be fitted for their shackles. 

You might also say... andt if they don't mind... that you would first of all like to go away and work out how to make their lives better in all ways and in ways that will endure.  Then ask if you could then come back to them and explain how the 'new plan' will work.  And let them choose again at that time.   This recognises dignity and builds trust... because it is honest.

Or, you can offer to work together to discover what will help them, and us perhaps, without hurting any of them and finding how your society will be able to provide useful guarantees, underwritten constitutionally by the whole of your society, with no possibility of constitutional amendments in the future and with restitutional clauses and personal accountabilities in criminal court for failure.. any failure (it is people's one and only lives you are messing with...), and enact all this, in your 'parliament' before any harm can be caused by actually doing anything..

Or you can just decide that all this is 'pie in the sky' and cannot be done and carry on with whatever patronising strategies and methods, that have delivered in the past with other groups, whatever it is that your society wants of them...  and afterwards use tear gas and bullets when they don't show the requisite appreciation expected of them.

Academic work could be so wonderful... if only it wasn't for the way that reality can some times creep in to upset all the theories!  People are not compartmentalised.

Robin

... good luck.  Trust needs truth that can be guaranteed..

Dear Emmanuel, this is a good question, I once was part of a project in this lines...and there are clear ways to earn people, commuity or rural people trust a) you need to leave academic credentials at home and be fine with being called "John doe"; b) you need to be seen with the skills of an agent of change; c) you need to be able to communicate camplex ideas in simple terms; d) you bring a sense of competition in the game and give then the sense that you will help them to be winners; e) you need to reasure them them that you will teach them to fish or help them to learn how to fish; and f) and that when the know how to fish you will let them go.

As you know goverments are organizaed in levels, community level, zone level, subreginal level, regional level, and countdry  levels...their techical structures are orgainzed usually in the same levels....some NGOs and businesses are organized in the same levels....usually poeple in general, urban or rural, specially the poor are are not organized....

This creates an structural problem in which the supply side of development is organized and the demand side it is not leading to the usuall top down method of delibering services and the down up flow of information and feedback about what happened on the ground....but not much of what happen on the gournd is fed to the top because of this structural problem....it is a supply side market driven model, very inneficient model, if they do not know the needs at the bottom, good, they have to do nothing....

One solution is to organized people, urban and rural, in the same levels of the technical structure of governments to flip the model outside down and make it a demand driven model....organized from the bottom up, their needs feeds up level, by level, and if not solutions are found the go to the next level, and some of those needs will read the top....this put pressure of the supply side of governments to deliver better and more inclusive services....

Because of these experiences I wrote a paper with ideas consisten with the comments above, you may find it interesting or with food for thoughts:

Where Should Donors Place Their Monetary and Trade Incentives to Encourage Developing Countries to Implement Balanced Pro-Rich/Pro-Poor Development Programs?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281244566_Where_Should_Donors_Place_Their_Monetary_and_Trade_Incentives_to_Encourage_Developing_Countries_to_Implement_Balanced_Pro-RichPro-Poor_Development_Programs

Have a nice day Emmanuele.

Article Where Should Donors Place Their Monetary and Trade Incentive...

Hi,

Trust is context-depend concept and Time depend-concept. These papers could be helpfull:

Hope it helps!

H.A

Thank you senior colleagues for your insightful contributions. Well appreciated, good to go now.

Conclusions from Eight Published Studies on Co-management and Forest Sustainability

                By 1999, state–community partnerships to manage forests had become globally acceptable with partnerships being reported from more than fifty countries (FAO, 1999). In parallel, in Canada, state-community partnerships had taken the form of community-based stakeholder committees that advise on the development of forest industry or provincial agency-convened plans for public timberlands lands in nine of ten provinces. In 1994, the province of Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) was mandated to provide local stakeholders with opportunities to become meaningfully involved in forest management planning. Like state-community partnerships globally, this was stimulated by failure of government management regimes, motivation to reduce bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and demand for increased local participation.

                State-community partnerships are conceptualized as adaptive organizational arrangements for natural resource (forest) sustainability. They typically range from user group management with government assistance to advisory group input into government management. All can increase forest sustainability by combining the interests and capacities of local community members with the ability of governments to provide enabling legislation, conflict resolution and other assistance.

                In 2001, I initiated the first in a series of ten published studies (eight are summarized here) to evaluate Ontario's stakeholder advisory committees and the partnering agency. This culminated in the publication of, "Evaluating the Transition to Sustainable Forest Management in Ontario's Crown Forest Sustainability Act and forest management planning manuals from 1994 to 2009" in the Aoril, 2015 issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research April. The series had began with a focus on cooperation (trust), specifically if and how it had developed. The following are lessons for state-community partnerships globally:

THE FIRST PHASE was based a comparative case study to evaluate deliberations between local district office staff and stakeholders (informed by scientists) and determine why development of cooperation (trust) varied. Deliberations were conceptualized as synonymous with analytic deliberation, one of Ostrom's eight design principles for robust environmental governance. Analytic deliberation is structured dialogue between scientists, resource users, and interested publics.

Conclusions

• Agency commitment was the most important criterion in the developing agency-committee cooperation.

• The extent to which district office support staff took an informal but nuanced, “hands on” approach that was carefully integrated with the capacity of local stakeholders was key.

• More than 50% of the key criteria that directly influenced deliberations did not occur in the other case. This highlights the uniqueness of each case and the importance of understanding local conditions for responsiveness.

• Advisory systems appear to have “thinner” cooperative relations than user group systems since participants are not likely to receive the benefits of their investments. This constrains the potential for voluntary labour or capital.

• Noncomplementary policies can crowd out cooperative relations between head and district offices of government bureaucracies

• Private sector organizations, subject to laws that protect the public interest, can be more responsive to local public interests than public sector organizations when they are more embedded within a community

• Overall, the most important theme that emerged was the level of generalized social capital within a community.

THE SECOND PHASE was based on content analyses of independent forest audits, self-evaluated reports of committee effectiveness, and interviews with current and former participants to confirm information complexity. Audits were also used to evaluate the success of committees. Deliberations were conceptualized as dependent on information that is congruent with decision maker needs in terms of timing, content, and form of presentation. Information complexity had emerged in the first phase, so became a focus.

Conclusions on information complexity

• Complexity of agency information was one of the most frequently mentioned issues that constrained participation.

• Committees struggled with the large amount of technical information (maps, terminology, acronyms) required to gain sufficient understanding, adapting models to the local context and with the effects of changing policy.

• Explorations of simulations revealed they can be subject to manipulation. Consequently, presentations must be ethical, comprehensible and communicate levels of uncertainty

Conclusions on the success of committees

• Responsiveness of the lead agency was high but didn't go as far as re-framing citizens to be integral participants in civic discourse who assist in making good decisions, resolving conflict, overcoming mistrust and building capacity

THE THIRD PHASE (1 publication) was a content analysis of legislation and planning manual revisions to confirm whether the agency's transition from sustained yield to the new sustainable forest management paradigm has been limited and analyse extent of policy change and learning.

Conclusions

• Bureaucratic learning about sustainability has been  limited. This suggests that, like the US Forest Service, persistent organizational resistance within OMNR may have constrained adoption of a new paradigm

• Lack of scaling up of feedback and learning in the bureaucracy and formal policy indicates limited transition to sustainability. Similarly, this suggests that, like the US Forest Service, old leader norms may continue to operate that create ineffective leaders for the modern context.

• Organizational conformity and homogeneity that had once well served agencies during the sustained yield era now risk agency ability to innovate and respond to change.

Dear Mark, thank for sharing this.  Interestingly if you read my comment based on personal experiece above they seem to be tgenerally very consistent with your conclusions....and needed to win trust.

Have a nice day

Emmanuel,  I would strongly recommend that you consider the conclusion which Mark has drawn from his research.  His Phase Three conclusions being particularly appropriate to your context, so that adapting them within the South African context at state level, a country which is still working through a regime shift,  in which and borrowing on Mark's words the 'conformity and homogeneity that had once well served agencies during the [ previous ] era now risk agency ability to innovate and respond to change' and you will also be well aware ' of feedback and learning in the bureaucracy and formal policy indicates limited transition to [.. a humanitarian constitutional form of government..]'.  Autocratic downward command structures inherited from the styles of both the previous state and the liberation organisations continue to suffuse the lowest level instances of local  initiatives where community involvement is desirable and even oft times generally an absolute necessity.  

The message which this research delivers is that it is very often the learning and buy-in of the personnel in the state stake-holder 'value chain' whose trust and commitment and sincerity towards community participation that is in most need of development and action on the part of the project 'management team'.  This, results from the unchallenged assumption that the capacity of the 'target' community to know what is good for them, what is possible and what is appropriate, is necessarily always going to be much less than that of state appointed outsiders... with book knowledge.

This presumption admits to the a priori admission by the state operatives that their intentions are not necessarily as pure as they will portray them.  From this arises the presumed need for measures to be put in place from the beginning.  Measures that will work towards ameliorating the effects, in the wider target community, of the inevitable concerns and cynicism which might result from the assessments of the more perceptive local people being communicated to their peers.

And so we, in our studies here, tend to presume it is that trust in the state formations which must be nurtured, however misplaced, rather than identifying and addressing those alternative ultimate causes that may be present.  These are, essentially,  the often inappropriate skills, prejudices and habituated behaviours of the state formations in the project.  To the more perceptive these phrases reduce to just one adjective.. 'incompetence'.  Incompetence, that is, in relation to achieving the avowed goals for which support is presented as being 'needed',   But skills, which if buy-in and trust can be arranged, may be entirely appropriate to the unsaid, ulterior goals of the cohort of non-local stakeholder interests - private as well as public.. who were generally already in 'agreement' and through which agreement the project may have been conceived in the first place.

Mark Robson, has perhaps not [..yet..?]  examined this alternate hypothesis as to why the need to build trust arises so often in the first place.  Cynicism is rarely without its own a priori causes!  ..First we should be sure that our own house is in order.  And be prepared to prove it... a priori.

Julie Fisher, in the first post here, seems to be equally aware of the pitfalls of our own habituated responses.  Responses which conform with the needs of the status quo in our own personal contexts.

Rob

 Hi Emmanuel Yeboah-Assiamah

"What approach does one need to win community or local people's trust?"

That is very important question. Even if we have to plan very rational approach for the joint forest management, we cannot achieve realistic targets if does not have  Mechanism  to obtain local people trust fro the program. as theoretical application  'stockholder theory' collective leadership theory' 'actor network theory' and 'micro credit or village banking system can bu applied to gather people to the joint forest management activities.       

Kumara, the answer is very simple, use Robert Chamber's participatory Development approach and Paulo Freiere's conscientization, let the community members be guided to decide what they want and you as the external actor as a facilitator. Let hem drive the process and then you guide them to choose the best option most suitable for the job.

Self-determination theory from social psychology suggests that the approach chosen in attempting to win local people's trust (and thus voluntary cooperation) needs to be one that the local population perceives to be supportive of its autonomy (rather than controlling). Sadly it is too often the case that so-called participatory or collaborative approaches are perceived by local people as just another way to control them, rather than as genuine efforts to support their autonomy.

In the article below we found statistical evidence that a community-based approach to climate governance was associated with stronger local perceptions of autonomy support, which were associated in turn with increased local cooperation with climate governance efforts.

Marshall, G.R., D.W. Hine, and M.J. East. 2017. Can community-based governance strengthen citizenship in support of climate change adaptation? Testing insights from Self-Determination Theory. Environmental Science and Policy 72:1-9.

Recognising that the initial question was posed 2 years ago, and the gentleman who posed it (Emmanuel Yeboah-Assiamah) indicated after many answers that he was "good to go", it may well be that adding to this discussion is no longer relevant.

However, some readers may be interested in a recent paper that refers to the importance of gaining trust as a key part of effective public participation when planning. In the paper I outline 25 key lessons learned, so for those who may be interested:

Day JC (2017).  Effective Public Participation is Fundamental for Marine Conservation – Lessons from a Large-scale MPA.  Coastal Management 45(6):470-486 + Supplementary (available on ResearchGate)

I think to do that, one must respict cultural values of local communities.

The best approach is using the participatory planning also known as participatory community mobilization. While tools such as RRA can be used. In working in a community, first look at the community entry process. Gate keepers identification, community gap identification also known as need assessment, SWOT analysis, resources mapping etc. Also give room for community counterpart sharing participation, in terms of resource mobilization and contribution amongst others.

We need to decolonize both research and researcher. Following articles may be helpful for this discussion:

Datta, R. (2017). Decolonizing both research and researcher, and its effectiveness in Indigenous research. Research Ethics. (1-24), http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1747016117733296

Datta, R., Khyang, U. N., Khyang, H. K. P., Kheyang, H. A. P., Khyang, M. C., & Chapola, J., (2015). Participatory action research and researcher’s responsibilities: An experience with Indigenous community. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(6)DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2014.927492.

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