Institutional Trust, Sector Confidence, and Charitable Giving Mark A. Hager a and E. C. Hedberg b a School of Community Resources & Development, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA; b Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona, USA ABSTRACT Trust influences charitable-giving behavior. However, prevailing theoretical discussion and empirical study of the effects of trust suffer from confusion over different dimensions of trust. In addition to the distinction between particularistic trust in indi- vidual organizations and generalized trust in unknown others, we differentiate generalized trust in strangers, institutions, and charitable organizations writ large. An empirical analysis con- centrates on the latter two, finding that charitable confidence directly influences charitable giving while institutional trust does not. We assert that the influence of charitable confidence on giving may help explain how individuals previously unaware of particular organizations or brands may be susceptible to cold calls and solicitations. KEYWORDS Charitable giving; confidence; trust Trust plays a central and recurring role in the literature and theories of voluntary action (Kearns, 2013). When considering why people find, join, solicit services from, volunteer with, or make monetary contributions to nonprofit organizations, trust inevitably enters the conversation. Many non- profit organizations rely financially on their ability to motivate individual donations (Fischer, Wilsker, & Young, 2011), and the decision to give is a central topic in nonprofit and philanthropic studies (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011). Scholarly and practical research has explored a variety of forces related to the decision to give. Practice has emphasized such things as how donors react to the language in marketing and fundraising appeals (Warwick & Overman, 2013) and webpage layouts (Tooley, 2008). Trust may underlie these forces, but Sargeant and Lee (2002a) urge conceptual clarity in distin- guishing trust from sincerity, effort, and expectations of cooperation. Individuals can be drawn to and decide to give to organizations for a variety of reasons. Parsing and understanding those reasons leads to better under- standing and practice. In this paper, we elaborate the influence of different representations of generalized trust. CONTACT Mark A. Hager Mark.Hager@asu.edu Associate Professor of Nonprofit Leadership & Management, School of Community Resources & Development, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Avenue, Suite 550, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0690. JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & PUBLIC SECTOR MARKETING 2016, VOL. 28, NO. 2, 164–184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10495142.2015.1011508 © 2016 Taylor & Francis