“You End Up Feeling Like the Rest of the World Is Kind of Picking on You”: Perceptions of Regulatory Science’s Threats to Economic Livelihoods and Idahoans’ Collective Identity

Abstract

This article contributes to research on public attitudes toward science, specifically science distrust, by analyzing responses from focus group interviews conducted in the U.S. state of Idaho. Idahoans share a collective cultural identity that values self-sufficiency, independence, and conservative suspicion of government. Content analysis of focus group transcripts from 12 urban and rural communities across Idaho show that regulatory science evokes the highest levels of distrust among participants, as they threaten economic livelihoods and Idahoans’ collective identification with independence and the industries on which Idaho’s economy was built.