Can the Public Be Trusted: The Promise and Perils of Voluntary Compliance

The book examines a central paradox: while voluntary compliance produces superior outcomes, regulators rarely adopt it systematically. The panel will analyze the book's theoretical framework, which combines behavioral ethics, regulatory theory, and social cooperation research to advance understanding of watchful trust in regulatory contexts. It explores how intrinsic motivation interacts with different regulatory approaches, offering insights into combining trust-based strategies with traditional oversight mechanisms. This analysis is particularly relevant for "smart regulation" approaches that adjust oversight based on regulated entities' demonstrated trustworthiness. The discussion will examine the book's empirical framework for measuring effective voluntary compliance, focusing on indicators such as compliance duration, spillover effects, and rule internalization. These metrics provide new tools for understanding how intermediaries, including professional associations and industry groups, influence trust-based regulatory systems. The book's analysis of boundary conditions for trust-based regulation across different cultural and institutional contexts contributes to self-regulation research. By identifying success and failure factors, it helps explain variations in self-regulatory effectiveness across sectors and jurisdictions. These findings can inform the design of more robust self-regulatory frameworks that account for institutional and cultural factors. The panel will also address the book's implications for broader research on trust in regulation. Its finding that procedural justice and legitimacy effects are often modest and context-dependent challenges conventional wisdom about trust-building in regulatory contexts. This raises questions about how regulators can better assess and build trust, particularly where past failures have eroded public confidence. Through these discussions, the panel aims to bridge theoretical and practical perspectives on regulatory trust. Participants will explore how the book's insights can inform both scholarly research and regulatory practice in an era of increasing complexity. The discussion will focus on developing sophisticated approaches to building and maintaining trust while remaining vigilant to the risks of misplaced trust. This analysis is particularly relevant given current challenges to regulatory legitimacy and the growing importance of voluntary compliance in addressing complex societal problems.