The Interdependence of Regulation and Public Trust in Europe’s Energy Transition

Regulation and trust are central components of contemporary public governance, yet their relationship remains insufficiently theorized in the context of increasingly complex and contested regulatory environments. Classical accounts often assume a substitution logic—where regulation compensates for low trust or where high trust reduces the need for regulatory control—but such perspectives no longer capture the realities of modern governance. Recent political developments, including rising populism, eroding confidence in technocratic institutions, and growing societal resistance to complex policy interventions, have renewed the urgency of understanding how regulation and trust interact across different sectors. This paper reconceptualizes regulation and trust as mutually reinforcing institutional forces and examines their co-evolution across EU member states from 2010 to 2022. Using panel data from the Worldwide Governance Indicators (regulatory quality) and the European Social Survey (public trust), it estimates cross-lagged and interaction models to evaluate how changes in regulatory performance and trust shape outcomes in the energy sector—particularly renewable energy deployment, grid investment progress, and permitting delays. Semi-structured interviews with regulators, system operators, and policymakers complement the quantitative analysis, offering insight into how trust dynamics and regulatory practices affect cooperation, decision-making, and project implementation. The anticipated findings would suggest that high-quality regulation enhance public trust, which in turn facilitates compliance, reduces enforcement costs, and strengthens the legitimacy of energy-transition measures. Likewise, higher levels of trust appear to improve regulatory performance by reducing information asymmetries and supporting more effective policy execution. Together, regulation and trust function as co-constructed pillars of governance, shaping societal acceptance, coordination capacity, and the pace of sectoral transformation. The study contributes to ongoing debates in regulatory governance by demonstrating how institutional quality and societal attitudes interact to influence policy effectiveness in a key strategic domain. P3