This paper investigates the relationship between political trust and the acceptability of government regulations in the environmental field. We hypothesise that trust in particular authorities and perceptions of the quality of institutional arrangements are important predictors of rule acceptance, which we assume is important for the long-term legitimacy of the regulatory system. We explore the validity of this hypothesis using the case of homeowners with on-site sewage systems (OSSs), i.e. small-scale systems treating sewage from one or a few households that contribute to eutrophication and data was gathered through a questionnaire sent to randomly selected homeowners with OSS in Sweden. The results support propositions that political trust indeed is an important factor explaining homeowners' acceptability of governmental regulations. Political trust is in turn influenced by homeowners' perceptions of authorities being environmentally effective and impartial when enforcing rules, as well as by positive experiences of authority contacts. Policy makers and officials should thus use trust-building approaches and factors underpinning trust such as those investigated in this study to increase rule acceptance and, in the longer-run, pro-environmental behaviour.

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Even though technological advances have occurred during recent decades today's nutrient loading from Swedish on-site sewage systems (OSSs) is much higher than in the 1940s, despite a decreased rural population and the existence of potentially far better technologies than the existing inadequate installations. The objective of this paper is first, to explain this situation as the result of co-evolution of technology and institutions, which has resulted in a very stable conservation. Second, to properly understand how such stable configurations may change, the paper investigates how a power-distributional theory of incremental institutional change might complement the previous analysis and open up the thinking about how seemingly stable configurations may change endogenously. The analysis reveals how shifts in the distribution of power, i.e., public and private actors' resources and tools to use in interaction with other actors, have influenced the direction of technological and institutional development. We conclude that the sequencing of events has been important; the series of choices made foremost between the 1950s and 1990s caused both institutional and technical lock-in effects that have been increasingly difficult to break out from. Despite parallel and later incremental developments, improvement in the environmental outcome is not yet seen on the large scale. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 4707

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