His work focuses on the development of a cross-boundary social science of trust, especially in the context of the relationship between the public and governmental institutions. Joe’s research has been conducted in contexts like policing, the state courts, natural resource regulation, environmental contamination, and municipal government. Broadly, this work seeks to integrate and refine discipline- and context-specific insights regarding conceptualizing, operationalizing, and modeling trust to best leverage the construct to protect and improve relationships between government and the governed.