Understanding and cooperation between experts and laypeople, as well as between citizens and institutions is often difficult in the management of societal risks such as natural disasters or technological and biological hazards. These hardships often result from incongruences in risk assessment from expert and non-expert sources and from a general lack of trust in the risk-management policies and in institutional communications about risk and prevention. Our studies investigate the role of trust in the mitigation of the harmful effects of natural disasters, both on communities and on individuals. Specifically, we will focus on how traumatic experience with natural disasters and trust in the institutional sources of risk information influence laypeople's decisions on safe behaviors.
