Participation Builds Trust, Not Framing: Insights from a National Energy-Transition Experiment

Public trust is widely recognized as a key condition for public cooperation in the energy transition, yet surprisingly little is known about whether and how government communication can actively shape that trust. In particular, value-based framing strategies are often assumed to be a low-risk way to strengthen credibility, but empirical evidence on their effects remains scarce. This study examines how the value content and institutional source of government communication influence trust in practice, using a large-scale national experiment (N ≈ 3,000) embedded in an online Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) on sustainable heat policy in the Netherlands.

 

Participants were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions or a value-neutral control group. The treatments varied along two dimensions: value-based framing (environmental, financial, or stability-related) and governance level (local versus national government). Trust in government was measured immediately before and after exposure, enabling a Difference-in-Differences design that isolates trust changes attributable to the communication treatments. To examine heterogeneity, the analysis combines DiD estimation with Latent Profile Analysis of baseline trust orientations and Honest Causal Forests to detect non-linear treatment-effect variation.

 

Across all specifications, value-based framing does not increase institutional trust and, in several cases, reduces it. The most consistent negative effect appears for stability framing delivered by local government. Importantly, these average null effects mask strong heterogeneity: trust responses differ substantially across latent trust profiles but not across socio-demographic groups. Individuals with higher baseline trust tend to react more negatively to value-laden messages, whereas lower-trust respondents show weakly positive or neutral responses. This indicates that communication sensitivity is driven primarily by pre-existing trust dispositions rather than demographic characteristics.

 

By contrast, participation in the PVE itself generates a modest but robust increase in trust across both treated and control groups, independent of framing. This pattern suggests that being invited to engage with policy trade-offs and provide input may strengthen perceptions of procedural fairness and benevolence more effectively than persuasive messaging. Overall, the findings challenge common assumptions in the nudging and public communication literatures. The findings suggest that participatory decision tools may strengthen trust, whereas value-laden communication risks unintended negative effects.