For any business, concerns about being seen to do right will partly be matters of values and aspiration. But they can also be approached in a more hard-headed way, as a matter of bottom lines and cost-benefit analyses. Here are three questions businesses can ask to help decide whether investing in social licence could be cost-effective in dollars and cents, compared with waiting to see how communities, regulators and competitors might respond.
Sarah Churstain is a partner at Wellington law firm Ford Sumner Lawyers.
Three questions worth asking
First: what’s your risk? This depends on both the probability of losing your social licence and the size of the impact if you do.
Tourism’s experience shows how a decline in community trust can threaten near-existential damage to an industry. Aviation faces a different but equally serious set of pressures putting the sector’s social licence at risk: aircraft emissions, regional connectivity, noise, and the challenge of integrating new technologies. By population, New Zealand sits sixth-highest globally in aviation emissions, according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of NZ. That puts Air New Zealand, as the national carrier, squarely in the spotlight. Overseas regulators have already shown they will act – France banned many domestic short-haul flights in 2023, and Spain is still considering something similar.
Second: how hard or easy is it to identify and reach the affected communities? If your impacts are localised – industrial noise near a residential area, say – you can reach key people directly, even get in the same room with many of them. But if stakeholders are diffused nationally or globally, you may need different mechanisms: ESG reporting (environmental, social and governance performance), or certification by a recognised third party.
The rise of drone technology illustrates how other operators in your own industry can compound the problem. Drones attracted public concern over privacy and air safety from early on – complaints to the Civil Aviation Authority about peeping incidents were reported as early as 2016, and concerns about rural theft from aerial surveillance followed. A responsible drone operator trying to rebuild trust through, say, a voluntary code of conduct faced an uncertain return: one rogue operator making headlines could undo months of goodwill and confirm in many minds that all drones are dangerous pests.
That many-to-many problem – too many operators, too diffuse for self-regulation to hold – ultimately pushed the country towards explicit regulation, now consolidated under the Civil Aviation Act 2023. The same dynamic can emerge in any sector with many smaller players.
Third: can you visibly demonstrate that you understand and are acting meaningfully to address community concerns?
When investments produce clear, verifiable results, they deliver stronger returns. New Plymouth Airport’s 10 MW solar farm Te Matakupenga, opened in September 2025, is a good example. The conventional business case is solid: diversified revenue, a hedge against rising electricity and carbon prices, future-proofing for electric aircraft. But the community trust dimension matters too. Airports are not big direct emitters, but they provide the infrastructure that enables airlines – which are. New Plymouth Airport can point Taranaki communities to concrete benefits: reportedly 1500 tonnes of carbon emissions avoided annually and an airport now largely self-sufficient for energy.
Air New Zealand’s Beta Alia CX300, here in Tauranga.
When results are less immediate or harder to measure, businesses need to build trust persistently and in multiple ways over time. Air New Zealand has acknowledged that reducing aircraft emissions is among its most significant challenges, and it is clear the airline cannot make a meaningful dent any time soon. Its Beta Alia trial is partly a practical test of new propulsion technology – but it is also a signal to the public that the airline is working in good faith toward real, if not immediate, progress. If electric aircraft trials like these succeed, they serve a double purpose: demonstrating intent and gradually normalising the idea of flying at 10,000 feet in a machine running on batteries.
Any organisation’s aspirations for community trust have to engage with a shaded reality. Positive public responses to a business’s impacts can range from grudging acquiescence through to enthusiastic support and, at best, genuine co-governance. At the heart of all of it is a question that won’t be going away any time soon: “Can we trust you?”
Sarah Churstain is a partner at Ford Sumner Lawyers and frequently works with clients in the aviation sector. She is a co-author of “Social license and New Zealand’s aviation industry: Come fly with me?”, a contribution to an academic publication on social licence and energy transitions.
Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter – a weekly round-up of our best commentary.