Co-management is widely advocated to effectively design conservation measures and coordinate policy trade-offs among sectors. Trust is key in such arrangements to achieve tangible outcomes, because it can help to turn disruptive conflict into fruitful contestations over suitable policy innovation. How and why trust in environmental co-management arrangements emerges, however, remains an understudied phenomenon. We adopt a relational angle and present theoretical arguments on the impact of social embeddedness on the formation of interpersonal trust relationships. Specific propositions are developed and empirically tested on data collected in the context of a German biodiversity conservation co-management process. The data is analyzed based on Exponential Random Graph Modelling (ERGM). The results provide empirical evidence on the importance of the relationship between social embeddedness and interpersonal trust. Actor characteristics, such as policy preferences and similarity in cognitions, seem to not play an important role for the choice of actors on whom to trust. We discuss the findings’ implications in the context of environmental co-management arrangements and argue that trust represents as a dynamic relational phenomenon, which is (co-)produced in an interactive governance process.

中文翻译：

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建立对环境共同管理的信任：有争议的德国生物多样性保护治理过程中的社会嵌入

共同管理被广泛提倡，以有效设计保护措施并协调部门之间的政策权衡。信任是此类安排取得切实成果的关键，因为它有助于将破坏性冲突转化为有关适当政策创新的富有成效的争论。然而，对环境共同管理安排的信任如何以及为何出现，仍然是一个未被充分研究的现象。我们采用关系角度，就社会嵌入对人际信任关系形成的影响提出理论论证。根据在德国生物多样性保护共同管理过程中收集的数据制定了具体建议并进行了实证检验。数据基于指数随机图模型（ERGM）进行分析。研究结果为社会嵌入与人际信任之间关系的重要性提供了实证证据。政策偏好和认知相似性等行动者特征似乎对于选择信任的行动者并没有发挥重要作用。我们讨论了环境共同管理安排背景下的研究结果的含义，并认为信任代表了一种动态的关系现象，它是在互动治理过程中（共同）产生的。