Trust and fear of exploitation in a public goods dilemma

The present article presents a brief theoretical overview about the role of trust in promoting cooperation in public goods dilemmas. Until now, no research has been conducted to explore the different psychological variables which are related to trust and which may help clarify the role of trust in public goods dilemmas. This article proposes some theoretical assumptions which explain that trust reduces people's experiences of fear of exploitation. This article also relates the concept of trust to perceptions of fairness and collective efficacy. Finally, some empirical evidence is presented to test these assumptions. Results show that trust seems, indeed, to have an effect on people's experiences of fear and, even more importantly, the power of trust to reduce fear seems to be strongly related to perceptions of fairness and collective efficacy.