Explaining beneficiaries’ and regulatees’ trust in regimes through stakeholder participation: a conceptual framework

Trust in regulation and in the actors that define, implement, enforce and judge the regulation - what is called the regulatory regime - is crucial. The proper functioning of such regime depends on the level of rule compliance by regulatees and willingness to uptake (public) services by beneficiaries, which, in turn, depends on their trust in said regime. History has shown us, however, that trust in regulatory regimes is often put to the test by high impact events, such as the COVID-19 crisis. Several factors play a role in building or deteriorating beneficiaries' and regulates' trust, such as whether or not these actors are involved in the policy creation process as stakeholders. The overall research objective for this paper is to construct a theoretical framework for the research question “How does stakeholder participation affect beneficiaries’ and regulatees’ trust in regulatory regimes?”.