Trust in researchers and researchers' statements in large carnivore conservation

1. Human– wildlife interactions occur when humans and wildlife overlap in the same landscapes. Due to the growing human population, the number of interactions will continue to increase, and in some cases, develop further into social conflicts. Conflicts may occur between people disagreeing about wildlife conservation or arguing over which wildlife management measures should be taken. Social con - flicts between humans are based on different attitudes, values and land-use aspi - rations. The success of solving these social conflicts strongly depends on building trust between the public, stakeholders, authorities and researchers, as trust is fundamental to all communication and dialogue. 2. Here we have examined how trust in large carnivore research differs within a geo - graphically stratified sample of the Norwegian population. The comprehensive survey, including 2,110 respondents, allows us to explore how people perceive factual statements about large carnivores depending on the source of these state - ments. Specifically, the respondents were given multiple statements and asked to judge them in terms of meaning

A key challenge is the loss and degradation of wild habitats, driven by the need for land for food production, human infrastructure and economic development (Barraquand & Martinet, 2011;Gordon et al., 2018;Haines-Young, 2009).
Species such as large carnivores, which require large areas, are particularly vulnerable to land use pressure and interactions with humans, as conservation of large tracts of land is difficult and affects many different land use interests, owners and stakeholders (Gangaas et al., 2015;Pedersen et al., 2020). Human-carnivore interactions create social conflicts between people with differing attitudes, values and tolerances of sharing landscapes with these species. Different kinds of effort have been made to try to understand and mitigate these social conflicts, but it has not been an easy task (Gangaas et al., 2013;Persson et al., 2015;Treves, 2009).
Trust is key to enabling sincere and constructive dialogue between different interest groups, in order to achieve understanding and agreement in how such conflicts develop or get resolved (Hendriks et al., 2020;Young et al., 2016). While trust in management authorities has been widely discussed in the literature (Hare et al., 2017;Lute & Gore, 2014;Sjolander-Lindqvist et al., 2015), trust related to wildlife research, has received limited attention. However, there is a growing interest in the role of the public's trust in science and the role played by science in society (Durant et al., 2019;Miller, 2001;Myers et al., 2017). In this study, we have investigated trust in large carnivore research in Norway, and how it may impact on the social conflict related to large carnivores (wolves Canis lupus, bears Ursus arctos, lynx Lynx lynx and wolverine Gulo gulo). Our main aim has been to see how people's trust in researchers and their research results may vary depending on people's attitudes, values or personal experiences of living in areas with large carnivores and further, to see whether people change their perception of the research results (presented as statements) depending on who makes claims about research results. Nature conservation in Norway, including large carnivore management, is steered by an overall political framework set by central government, with the national nature management authorities (e.g. Norwegian Environment Agency; www.envir onmen tagen cy.no) ensuring the implementation of this policy. While state governance and national management authorities get professional advice and recommendations from researchers and research institutions, national political parties are heavily influenced by local democratic processes and local politicians (Falleth & Hovik, 2009). Local government and local democracy have strong traditions in Norway, where controversy and conflicts within nature conservation contribute to the tension between local and national governance (Falleth & Hovik, 2009). Large carnivore management has been delegated to local county boards, with the goal of enabling a balance to be made between local interests and use of natural areas, and national commitments to biodiversity conservation (Hovik & Hongslo, 2017).
Their decisions are still expected to be based on professional recommendations from research and central management authorities (Eklund et al., 2020a). Yet, local politicians and stakeholders often question these professional recommendations and express distrust in the research recommendations as they also disagree with national commitments and political decisions (Falleth & Hovik, 2009;Lute & Gore, 2014). Hence, social conflicts related to large carnivores are as much about the symbolic value of central authorities that override local democracy as they are about the actual abundance of the animals Eriksson, 2017;Linnell et al., 2017;Wilson, 1997). This is particularly the case for wolves in Norway, but is also found in several other countries (Skogen & Krange, 2003;Wilson, 1997).
People living in areas with large carnivores may find themselves negatively affected by having large carnivores in their area, for example, by being financially and emotionally affected by experiencing livestock predation, feeling anxiety when carnivores approach close to where they live, or being dissatisfied by reductions in hunting quotas of game species (Stormer et al., 2019;Weladji et al., 2003). This may lead to feelings that large carnivore policy is unfair (Eklund et al., 2020;Konig et al., 2020). A lack of trust in researchers and research statements may also arise due to a disagreement in the preferred knowledge base, in particular if the knowledge that is disseminated from science and from local experience diverges (Durant et al., 2019;Lute & Gore, 2014;Mallory et al., 2006). While researchers advocate science as their knowledge base (Lute & Gore, 2014;Peuhkuri, 2002), local people and stakeholders may oppose this and instead express greater trust in local knowledge (Lute & Gore, 2014;Mallory et al., 2006;Peuhkuri, 2002). In democratic processes, people trusting local knowledge may impact on political decisions in a direction that tends to deviate from professional research-based 4. This study provides a novel perspective in understanding the role trust plays in social conflicts related to human-wildlife interactions.

K E Y W O R D S
geographically stratified survey, human dimensions, human-wildlife interactions, large carnivores, new environmental paradigm, trust in research recommendations. Such mistrust and social conflict are not specific to Norwegian nature conservation, but have been debated in relation to the wolf's reestablishment in human-dominated landscapes worldwide Skogen & Krange, 2003).
Trust facilitates communication and dialogue between people both at individual and collective levels, that is, between individuals, stakeholders, interest groups and institutions (Kelman, 2005;Sjolander-Lindqvist et al., 2015). However, trust strongly depends both on how people accept or relate to the issue (e.g. acceptance of carnivores in Norway), and how they trust the communicator of the message (here, the carnivore researchers communicating research results; Corner et al., 2015;De Cruz, 2020;Myers et al., 2017). In studies related to nature management, social trust, defined as the willingness to rely on those who have the formal responsibility to develop policies and take actions (Cvetkovich & Winter, 2003), has often been used. Social trust also emphasizes the importance of trusting the operation of government and other organizations in democratic societies (Cvetkovich & Winter, 2003). An important feature of the development of social trust is the emphasis of shared values and knowledge base between people (Balliet & Van Lange, 2013;Johansson et al., 2017;Stern & Coleman, 2015).
To better understand people's values and attitudes relating to wildlife (Manfredo et al., 2016;McCleery et al., 2006;Vaske & Donnelly, 1999), the new environmental paradigm (NEP) has been widely used (Klain et al., 2017). The NEP can be considered an environmental value orientation that gives a relatively stable expression of how one evaluates the environment (Fransson & Garling, 1999;Milfont & Duckitt, 2010;Schultz & Zelezny, 1999). The original NEP scale was developed by Dunlap andVan Liere in 1978 (Dunlap &Van Liere, 1978), and revised in 2000 (Dunlap et al., 2000). It includes 12-15 standardized questions that align in an ecocentric to anthropocentric frame. Previous studies have shown that people living in rural areas with large carnivores traditionally express more negative attitudes towards large carnivores and values tend to be more anthropocentric compared to those of people in urban areas with no or very low carnivore abundance (Eklund et al., 2020b;Skogen & Krange, 2003;Sponarski et al., 2013). The NEP is rooted in individual basic values, having both emotional and cognitive (knowledge) components (Dunlap, 2008). We have therefore chosen to use it to explore how people's environmental value orientation may relate to their trust in researchers and research statements. High NEP-scores correlate with pro-environmental values, also called ecocentrism, where nature is seen to have an intrinsic value regardless of human utilitarian needs (Dunlap et al., 2000;Kortenkamp & Moore, 2001).
Low NEP-scores correlate with anthropocentrism, where humans value nature that is beneficial to humans and believe that nature is to be utilized (Kaltenborn et al., 2008;Rauwald & Moore, 2002).
We expect that low NEP-scores will associate with lower trust in large carnivore researchers, while high NEP-scores are expected to positively associate with high trust in researchers (Ardahan, 2012;Dunlap, 2008;Weladji et al., 2003).
Hunters and hunting traditions have also come to the fore regarding conservation of large carnivores (Ericsson & Heberlein, 2003;Treves, 2009). Hunters often report negative attitudes towards carnivores, and in particular towards wolf establishment, in addition to representing a strong voice in social debates about wildlife management (Agarwala et al., 2010;Karlsson & Sjostrom, 2007; Naughton- Treves et al., 2003;Torres et al., 2020). Researchers, on the other hand, often pinpoint how the politically set management goals for wolves are too low to achieve an ecologically sustainable population, that hunting of wolves should be restricted and these low population sizes will lead to negative factors like inbreeding depression (Akesson et al., 2016;Nilsson, 2004). In Norway, hunting is traditionally a strong part of people's identity in many rural societies, and the option to participate in big game hunting teams is inherited between generations (Herman, 2014;von Essen et al., 2019). We expect that areas associated with strong hunting traditions or with high numbers of hunters, would also express lower trust in research compared to areas with lesser hunting traditions, as carnivores, and wolves in particular, compete with hunters for game or prey species and, in addition, wolves may kill hunting dogs.
A sustainable long-term conservation strategy requires a multidisciplinary understanding of spatial, ecological and social sciences (Andreassen et al., 2018;Johansson et al., 2016;Trouwborst et al., 2017). This study contributes to a better understanding of the social conflict related to the role of trust in research, and how researchers are perceived by the public as providers of knowledge. As people's acceptance of new knowledge usually decreases with age and increases with higher education (Williams et al., 2002), we would expect that trust in large carnivore researchers follows the same pattern. We also expect that people living in rural areas with strong traditional values and experience of losing free-ranging sheep to large carnivores would express a lower trust in large carnivore researchers compared to people living in areas where these values and direct experiences are not so prominent.

| MATERIAL S AND ME THODS
The study is based on a survey conducted over the telephone by a data collection agency (NORSTAT; www.norst at.no) between April and June 2019 and contained approximately 40 questions (see Appendix 1). NORSTAT collects data by interviews with a sample of people, based on existing, publicly available registers. The respondents had given a written agreement to the survey company NORSTAT to participate voluntarily in such surveys, and all participated voluntarily. Our study is based on a sample size of 2,110 respondents.
To obtain responses distributed evenly throughout Norway and independent of population density, we used geographically stratified sampling by surveying 5 people (aged 15-99 years old) in each of the 422 municipalities throughout the country. As the sample represents a very small proportion of people living in high-density areas such as cities and towns, it does not measure the general opinion of people living in a specific region (i.e. county or country).
We used data from the Norwegian large carnivore data base (www.rovda ta.no) for the number of carnivores registered in each county, and from Statistics Norway (www.ssb.no) for information such as numbers of hunters (hunter ratio) and free-ranging sheep per municipality (sheep density). In line with earlier studies, we defined rural areas as areas characterized by free-ranging sheep, loss of sheep to large carnivores and strong traditions of big game hunting (Gangaas et al., 2013).

| Questionnaire
The questionnaire was in Norwegian and included demographic variables like age, gender, home municipality, and final level of education. We assessed respondents' general trust in large carnivore research by asking the extent of their agreement with the statement 'I have confidence in large carnivore research in Norway', 'I think large carnivore researchers hold a high level of expertise', and 'I think large carnivore researchers seem to have high credibility'. The respondents were also given questions about their attitudes towards large carnivores, and whether they found current carnivore numbers to be 'too many', 'appropriate' or 'too few' in relation to each carnivore species. We also asked questions related to whether or not respondents had experienced predation of sheep or other domestic animals by large carnivores, and whether or not they presently lived in an area they perceived to hold strong traditions of big game hunting. We used a seven-question version of NEP (Table 1; Bjerke & Kaltenborn, 1999;Dunlap, 2008;Kaltenborn et al., 2008), translated into Norwegian (see Gangaas et al., 2015;Kaltenborn et al., 2012) to measure different aspects of the respondents' environmental values (Table 1). The NEP-score for each respondent was estimated as the mean of the seven answers where highly disagree was given the value 1 (highly anthropocentric), and highly agree given the value 5 (highly ecocentric). Question 3, 5 and 7 were reversed when estimating the mean value.

| Piloting the survey
The questions in the whole survey were piloted and tested on a small sample of researchers and colleagues, and their feedback was taken into account before finalizing the questionnaire.

| Trust in researchers and their statements
Trust in research statements was measured by respondents' perception of five different statements that were all genuine research results from the Scandinavian wolf research project Skandulv (Table 2).
First, all five statements were presented without any information about their origin, and respondents were asked if they perceived the statement to be a research result, a political claim, conjecture, a manipulative statement or do not know. In the second step, respondents were presented with exactly the same genuine research statements as before, but now were given information that the statements were presented by each of four different communicators (a large carnivore researcher, the Norwegian Fish and Game associations, the farmers associations and by a politician). The respondent was then asked to again evaluate how their perception of each statement might vary with the specific communicator: that is do you perceive the same statements as a research result, a political claim, conjecture, a manipulative statement or do not know.
The respondents got one statement and communicator combination presented at a time and had to finish considering this before they were presented with a new combination. The order of the communicators was presented randomly. In total, each respondent had then been given 25 different combinations of statement and communicator (the same five genuine statements in combination with all four specified communicators in addition to the same five statements with unspecified communicators to start with). However, to keep the current focus and interpretations as simple as possible we only analysed differences in perception between an unspecified communicator and a large carnivore researcher communicator.
When respondents changed their perception of the statements from being a research statement to instead be a political claim, conjecture or a manipulative statement when informed that the statement was TA B L E 1 The seven questions used to estimate the new environmental paradigm answered in a five interval Likert-type scale

New environmental paradigm
(1) The balance in nature is delicate and easily upset (2) Humans are severely abusing the environment (3) The so-called 'ecological crisis' facing humankind has been greatly exaggerated (4) Plants and animals have the same rights to life on earth as humans (5) The balance of nature is sufficiently stable to withstand the impacts from a modern industrial society (6) If things continue on their present course we will soon experience a major ecological catastrophe (7) Human ingenuity will ensure future life and living conditions on Earth

TA B L E 2
The five different statements presented to our respondents who interpreted the statements as a research result, political claim, conjecture, a manipulative statement or do not know

Statements
(1) The wolf in Scandinavia is most likely of Finnish-Russian origin (2) The wolf in Scandinavia has the capacity to migrate from Finland/Russia down to southern parts of Scandinavia (3) Up to 95% of the Scandinavian wolf diet consist of moose (4) A total of 5 Swedish migratory wolves have been identified in and outside the wolf zone this year (2018) (5) The large carnivores tend to have home ranges of hundreds or thousands of square kilometres claimed by a researcher, we interpreted this as a mistrust in the large carnivore researchers.

| Response variables
In this paper, we have focused on: (a) the public trust in large carnivore researchers and (b) how trust in research results may change depending on who makes these statements. As wolf research in Scandinavia has been going on for a long time, and represents almost every perspective of the ongoing debate about trust in large carnivore research Skogen & Krange, 2003;Wilson, 1997), we have chosen to use research statements from Scandinavian wolf research in this study.

| Predictor variables
The main predictor variables in our study are: the respondent's attitudes towards having large carnivores in Norway, their environmen-  Table 3).

| Statistical analyses
To explore variations in how the statements were perceived among the respondents and how this perception changed when the respondents were told that the statements came from a large carnivore researcher, we set up two multinomial logit models. The first model explored how the statements were perceived (i.e. the probability of falling into each of the five categories across all five statements: research, political, conjecture, a manipulative statement or do not know) for the unspecified setting while the second model focused on the large carnivore researcher communicator setting.
In both models, perception was analysed as a function of the different variables describing the individual respondent. We used an information theoretic approach (Burnham & Anderson, 2002) to objectively decide which variables were meaningful to include in the final models. Based on prior knowledge, age, education and NEP-score were always included in the candidate models (Gangaas et al., 2015; see Table 3). We did, however, explore whether sheep density, loss of sheep to carnivores, big game hunting traditions, trust in large carnivore research and local presence of large carnivores in general, or wolves in particular, were meaningful predictor variables to include in the model (see Table 3). The latter variables were thus either included or excluded as additive effects in different candidate models. We also included a candidate model with only age as a predictor variable, in total testing 10 models against each other in the model selection procedure. As each respondent considered multiple statements, this produced repeated choices made by the same individuals. We therefore implemented mixedeffect multinomial models, treating respondent ID as a random effect (random intercepts only) for all candidate models. The models were constructed using the mlogit-library (Croissant, 2020)

| Ethics statement
The interviews followed a strict protocol as dictated by standard research ethics of the Norwegian Social Science Data Service (Ross et al., 2016). Neither the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN) nor the data collection agency are required to seek permission for this kind of data collection from the Norwegian Social Science Data Service (NSD; Ross et al., 2016). NSD is the institution reviewing research proposals for data collection, but an ethics review and permit are only required in cases where the researchers and/or the data collection agency retain a register of respondents for purposes such as reminders or follow up surveys.
This was not the case for our study, and we have no register or any other kind of information that can be used for linking individuals to the data set.  (Table 3). In addition, the model included a variable for carnivore presence in general, rather than wolf in particular, suggesting that the probability of changing the perception of the statements was not species specific in regard to the local presence/absence of carnivores.

| Attitudes towards large carnivores
When asked the question 'how do you find the large carnivore situation in Norway', more than 50% of the respondents felt that there were too few or an appropriate number of carnivores (Table 4; wolves; 50.4%, bears; 65.2%, lynx; 65.6%, wolverine; 52.8%), though the wolf situation stood out by showing that more respondents (781; 37.0%) felt there were too many wolves than any other species (Table 4).

| Trust in large carnivore researchers and wolf research statements
When the respondents were presented with the statement 'I think large carnivore researchers seem to have high credibility', 18% of the respondents highly disagreed or disagreed, while 58% answered that they highly agreed or agreed (24% did not know). On the similar statement 'I think large carnivore researchers hold a high level of expertise', 55% reported that they highly agreed or agreed, while 15% highly disagreed or disagreed (29% did not know).
For the unspecified communicator setting, our model predicted a nearly 60% probability that a respondent would perceive the statements as research results. Furthermore, we found an almost 20% probability that the statements were perceived as conjecture, and less than a 10% probability of their being perceived as political claims or a manipulative statement (Figure 1).
Thus, the pattern showed that the respondents in general perceived the statements as research results, regardless of the context in which the statements were presented. The probability of statements being perceived as research results increased to almost 75% when it was claimed that the statements were communicated by researchers, while the chance of the statement being perceived as conjecture declined to <10% (Figure 1). The probability of the statements being perceived as a manipulative or political claim was relatively unchanged.

| Perception of statements related to environmental value orientation (NEP-scores)
The probability of a respondent reconsidering the statements as research results when being informed that they were made by a researcher, increased markedly with increasing ecocentric values (high NEP-scores). Correspondingly, the probability of reconsidering the statements as conjecture, a manipulative statement or political decreased with increasing ecocentric values (Figure 2

TA B L E 4 Distribution of attitudes towards large carnivores in Norway when
respondents were asked if they found the carnivore situation to be too many, appropriate or too few related to each carnivore species (percentages presented in brackets) as manipulative or political, and a lower probability of perceiving them as research results, when they were informed that the statement was made by a large carnivore researcher (Figure 2).

| Hunter ratio
The probability of perceiving the statements as research results when stated by a researcher showed a general increase with hunter ratio (number of registered hunters per inhabitant in the municipality). Furthermore, the probability of changing the perception of the statements as political were also significantly higher when they were informed that the statements were claimed by a researcher (Figure 2), and the probability of perceiving the statements as conjecture decreased.

| Age and education
Older people were more prone to change their perception of the statements to being manipulative or political when the statement was made by a researcher, no matter what they had answered in the unspecified setting. The probability of perceiving the statements as research results, were higher in younger age classes when informed that the statements were made by a researcher (Figure 2). We did not find any obvious effect on the probability of changed perception among our respondents in relation to education level.

| Trust in large carnivore research in general
Respondents who expressed trust in large carnivore research in general increased their perception of the statements being research results when informed they were made by a researcher, while respondents who did not trust carnivore research in general did not change their perception very much, and still perceived the statements as political or manipulative (Figure 3).

| Direct experience with large carnivores
Among respondents who had experienced loss of, for example, livestock to large carnivores, we found a slightly higher probability of perceiving the statements as manipulative when informed that the statement was claimed by a large carnivore researcher (Figure 3).
People living in areas inhabited by large carnivores did not show any obvious change in how they perceived the statements depending on who the communicator was, and neither did respondents who lived in areas they themself described as areas with strong big game hunting traditions (Figure 3).

| D ISCUSS I ON
In general, our findings show that among the respondents, large carnivore researchers were well trusted as there was a 75% probability Interestingly, trust in researchers' statements increased among respondents living in areas with a high hunter ratio, though we also revealed that respondents living in these high hunter ratio areas also expressed a slightly higher probability of perceiving the statements as political when claimed by a researcher. This implies that there might be a wider diversity of views among people in areas with high hunter ratios.
The probability of expressing lower trust in researchers increased with the respondents' age, loss of sheep and with increasing anthropocentric value orientation (low NEP-scores). People with anthropocentric values are generally skeptical of wildlife conservation, deny that climate change is caused by anthropogenic activities, and deny that there is an ecological crisis going on. Older people perceived research results as manipulative or political when being informed that the statements were expressed by a researcher. This is consistent with studies of attitudes towards large carnivores, as older people usually show less acceptance of having large carnivores than young people Roskaft et al., 2007).
Overall, loss of sheep, hunter ratio, and anthropocentric values are all highly associated with rural area characteristics (Andreassen et al., 2018;Kaltenborn & Bjerke, 2002), while the presence of carnivores is no longer specific to rural areas in Norway (e.g. both wolves and lynx have established in areas with high human population density; Krange et al., 2017). The lower trust among respondents associated with these rural area characteristics may also be an expression of either having more trust in local knowledge, or less trust in the authorities, attitudes towards wildlife species become increasingly negative when people are directly affected (Ericsson & Heberlein, 2003;Eriksson et al., 2015). This strengthens our impression that trust in large carni- The change is the difference between a respondent's perception when switching from setting with an unspecified context to a setting where the statements were provided by a carnivore researcher. Positive values on the y axis (i.e. when estimated means are above the dashed line at zero) indicate that there was an increase in the probability of the respective perception, while negative values (below the dashed line) indicate that there was a reduction in probability of the respective perception. The fitted lines connect the perception-specific mean estimates for the different levels of the variables, while the vertical lines indicate the standard deviation around the respective mean estimates (Ericsson & Heberlein, 2003;Treves, 2009). However, our findings may reflect the fact that rural areas, including areas with high hunter ratios, in general have become more heterogeneous with people representing a variety of values, livelihoods and attitudes, as in more urban areas (Konig et al., 2020;Sponarski et al., 2013). If these results are represented by hunters versus non-hunters, the reasons behind these differences warrant attention in further studies.
Our study cannot pin-point the reasons why certain people mistrust researchers and their research statements, but it could be that they fear the research results will have a negative impact on their everyday life and livelihood. It could also arise from a generally low trust in researchers, representing a social elite that seems alienating and untrustworthy. The battle over power between central authorities and local society is well known both in Norway and in other countries Lute & Gore, 2014 ing certain statements about climate change and still maintain their credibility and integrity as scientists . However, Beall et al. (2017) argue that this depends on whether or not the public interpret the researchers' information as being motivated to serve or to persuade the public . In Norway, there is a common expectation that researchers are non-political (Ministry of Education & Research, 2005), particularly in controversial topics like conflicts related to large carnivores. We believe that it is important that researchers manage to build confidence and trust among the public. Earlier studies have emphasized the importance of bridging the gap between conservation managers and ecological scientists (Bertuol-Garcia et al., 2018;Durant et al., 2019). We think that it is also important to understand how to bridge the gap between researchers and local people in rural districts as this may contribute to lessening conflict over social power. Trust in knowledge providers, here represented by large carnivore researchers, is important in order to gain local people's support of management decisions in nature conservation (Liu et al., 2018;Taye et al., 2018). Our results challenge researchers and research institutions to improve relationships and build trust in scientific knowledge. Researchers' role as trusted knowledge providers has the potential to strongly influence conservation management and the political decisions taken.

| CON CLUS ION
This study shows that in general, most people express trust in large carnivore researchers and their research results. However, there are still some people who express low trust in large carnivore researchers, and this low trust is primarily associated with inhabitants living in areas with negative experiences of large carnivores, including predation of livestock. Over the last decade, there has been a general decline in trust in research worldwide and the public is increasingly questioning their trust in researchers (Iyengar & Massey, 2019;Johansson et al., 2017). These changes are likely to have a significant impact on both local and national politics, and political decisions may be left to feelings, traditions, or political ideology rather than professional recommendations. This may not benefit forward-looking conservation of nature or resolving difficult issues such as large carnivore conflicts or halting climate change. A general lack of trust in research, together with the growing societal trends of creating 'alternative realities' or 'fake news' are highly problematic and contribute to an increased political polarization, further preventing crucial nature conservation measures, fueling conflicts and disagreements instead (Brandtzaeg et al., 2018;Iyengar & Massey, 2019). We recommend increasing efforts to investigate the reasons and causes of the lack of trust in researchers and scientific knowledge, in order to contribute to a better understanding of what is driving the lower trust. We also recommend implementing trust building measures that benefit research as the knowledge provider of future nature and biodiversity conservation.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENT
This study is funded by Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and the Competence, University and Research Fund in Hedmark (KUF-fondet). The authors thank the valuable comments given to an earlier draft of the paper by Jos Milner and for proofreading the English also in this latest draft.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
All authors have been great contributors, and there are no conflict of interests in this work.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
Our data are archived and made available at Dryad Digital Repository at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6hdr7 sr21 (Mathiesen et al., 2021).

R E FE R E N C E S
Agarwala, M., Kumar, S., Treves, A., & Naughton-Treves, L. (2010). Paying for wolves in Solapur, India and Wisconsin, USA: Comparing compensation rules and practice to understand the goals and politics