Building legitimacy and trust between a mining company and a community to earn social license to operate: A Peruvian case study

The purpose of this paper is to understand how a mining company earns social license to operate (SLO) by taking action to gain legitimacy and build trust by presenting a comparative case study analysis of two mining operations in Peru. The analysis was qualitative in nature and was complemented by insights gleaned from supplementary interviews with key informants and the emerging literature on SLO, legitimacy, and trust. The findings revealed a model with a total of five components to earn SLO-three for legitimacy (pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy) and two for trust (decision-maker factors and situational factors).