Citizen perceptions of fracking-related earthquakes: Exploring the roles of institutional failures and resource loss in Oklahoma, United States

Effect of linguistic framing and information provision on attitudes towards induced seismicity and seismicity regulation

“…People in the UK are opposed to the existence of the seismic events, not primarily to their effects. This is consonant with McComas and colleagues 41 , showing lack of support for ‘unnatural’ events especially if there is little perceived social benefit, and Ritchie and colleagues 42 , showing the connections between withdrawn trust and opposition to industrial operations. Research further shows that factual beliefs about shale gas development may stem from negative attitudes towards shale gas, rather than the beliefs fostering such attitudes 84 .…”

“…In Oklahoma, for example, the substantial increase in induced seismicity caused by injection of wastewater from oil and gas operations has caused mental health concerns 46 , increased risk perceptions about shale gas development 38 , and has appreciably reduced trust in government regulators 39 , 42 . McComas and colleagues 41 reveal that expert-driven processes around induced seismicity in New York (USA) are less acceptable to the public, compared to processes in which the public is afforded a role in deciding whether and how to implement the technology that caused the seismicity.…”

“…Micro-seismic events can be caused by a large range of industrial processes, from surface and sub-surface mining to construction—anything that causes ground shaking. Vlek 48 and Ritchie and colleagues 42 point to the key role of trust in responsible experts and policy-makers, and perceived procedural fairness, in relation to induced seismicity from gas development in Groningen, The Netherlands, and wastewater injection in Oklahoma, USA, respectively. Liu and colleagues 49 reveal that two distinct forms of trust are both relevant for public acceptability of gas development that may cause induced seismicity; perceived integrity of responsible actors is even more important than competence-based trust.…”

The Role of Institutional Trust in Industry, Government, and Regulators in Shaping Perceptions of Risk Associated with Hydraulic Fracturing in the United Kingdom

“…The present study considers the relationship between trust and perceptions of risk by drawing upon (1) Freudenburg’s (1993) theoretical work on recreancy and (2) developments in critical environmental justice studies on expendability (Pellow 2016). While the concept of recreancy is often applied to situate technological disasters (e.g., Cope et al 2016; Gill et al 2016; Ritchie et al 2013), few studies have utilized recreancy to contextualize perceptions of risk in the case of shale gas development using hydraulic fracturing (except see Ritchie et al 2021). The current study does just this, relying on data from a sample of U.K. residents.…”

“…For instance, research on disasters typically reports that trust declines in a similar fashion for all institutions, including industry, government, and regulators (e.g., Cope et al 2016; Defeyter et al 2021; Gill et al 2016). Moreover, recent research on the association between recreancy and human-induced seismicity in the United States (Oklahoma) combine people’s beliefs about the “capabilities” of regulators and industry together into one component (Ritchie et al 2021). In brief, while previous research suggests the loss of institutional trust often occurs across all institutions, our findings suggest this may not always be the case.…”