Presentation at the 2011 West Coast Nonprofit Data Conference, Tucson, April 30

1. Institutional Trust, Sector Confidence, and Charitable Giving Mark Hager, ASU Eric Hedberg, NORC

2. Two aims Theoretical clarification of different conceptions of trust. Sort out relationship between two dimensions of trust and their relationships with giving.

3. Different conceptions of trust Trust in specific organizations Generalized trust Institutional trust Sector confidence

4. Trust in specific organizations “I trust my church, so I give to it.” Eg, Sargeant and Lee 2004 Trust in an organization Giving Commitment to organization

5. Generalized trust “I trust people to do the right thing, so I’ll give to Save the Children.” Rosenberg (1956): “Generally speaking, do you believe most people can be trusted?”

6. Generalized trust Putnam: Trust on the decline. Trust can be built from civic engagement.

7. Generalized trust Uslaner 2002 Bekkers 2003 Engagement is a consequence of trust, not a cause. Generalized Trust Giving

8. Institutional trust “I trust institutions to work for our common good, so I’ll give to CARE.” Grønbjerg 2009

9. Charitable Confidence Paul Light, since 9/11

10. Trust versus Confidence Institutional Trust: Deeply held moral value, formed early, hard to change. Sector Confidence: Formed by experience, influenced by media. “Nonprofit executives get paid too much, so food bank donation from me.”

11. Question Sector confidence has been almost totally overlooked in studies of charitable giving. What role does sector confidence play in explaining institutional trust’s influence on giving?

12. Data and Method KnowledgeNetworks panel of 1000 Arizona residents. April/May 2009: Institutional trust and charitable confidence. Institutional trust: police officers, nonprofits, elected officials, hospitals, religious orgs, schools.

13. Data and Method July 2009: Giving, volunteering, various controls. Wave overlap with full data: N=527. Dependent variable: Lntotal charitable contributions in 2008.

14. OLS Predicting Giving

15. Structural Equation Path Model

16. Conclusions In giving decisions, institutional trust is moderated by charitable confidence. Institutional trust does not have an independent effect. Future research needs to bring sector confidence into discussion of trust.

17. Revisions Cut structural equation model. See if relationship holds up in three different models: 1. Current OLS, ln(giving) 2. Logit, give or not 3. Multinomial logit: no giving, secular giving, religious giving, both

18. Thanks! Questions?