The effect of organizational trust on the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate to non-governmental organizations
Liana Khanaghyan (11680903) Master’s Thesis – Corporate Communication
Master’s programme Communication Science, Graduate School of Communication Supervisor: dr. A. Wonneberger
Abstract
Increasing pressure from public has made organizations put more effort in becoming more transparent. This study looked at how financial transparency employed in non-governmental organizations is connected with one’s intentions to donate, as well as what role organizational trust plays in this relationship. Surveys conducted on three human rights organizations
demonstrated that online transparency on organizational websites partially leads to more motivation to donate. The results showed that the more transparent respondents perceived the company to be about financial matters, the more inclined they were to make a financial contribution to that organization. In addition, trust was observed to mediate the relationship between financial transparency and the intention to donate. This means one’s motivation to donate inflicted by transparency disappeared once trust towards those organizations was taken into account. And finally, the results have also demonstrated that organization-specific
differences and traits might play a role in the relationship between transparency, trust and motivation to donate.
Introduction
During the past 20 years, there has been a big pressure for transparency in every societal institution, including businesses and non-profit organizations (Auger, 2014). Transparency has become a very frequently used term in the public discourse, especially among communication practitioners, despite the fact that there is no single agreed-on definition for it. Wehmeier and Raaz (2012) analyzed 105 academic articles from business sources and found that only 13 of them gave a clear definition for transparency. The definitions of transparency usually range from “openness”, “the opposite of secrecy” to “disclosure of information”, depending on the context it
is studied in. To put it simply, “it is a process that makes information about existing conditions, decisions and actions accessible, visible and understandable” (Deng, et al., 2015).
Transparency is necessary for every organization, since it allows different groups of stakeholders make informed decisions concerning their relationship with a particular organization (Sisco & McCorkindale, 2013). The concept has become of more interest to organizations after numerous research have demonstrated the direct tangible benefits of employing transparency. Particularly, transparency has been proven to contribute to more credibility and stakeholder trust (Schnackenberg & Tomlinson, 2014). For example, Rawlins (2008) found that the organizations practicing transparency are more likely to be trusted by their employees. Trust can be one of the outcomes of transparency and is mentioned in a lot of studies researching transparency. Norman, et al., (2010) came to the conclusion that the more
transparent an organizational leader is the more likely he/she is to be trusted by employees. Although, being transparent is relevant for all organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) particularly seem to struggle with implementing transparent
communication practices because of privacy and security constraints (Vaccaro & Madsen, 2009). However, since NGOs heavily depend on public funding or financial sponsorship from other institutions, it becomes very vital for them to appear as trustworthy as possible to strengthen the relationship between the organization and its constituents. Research has found that increased transparency and especially increased fundraising disclosure of non-profit organizations leads to increased donations and grants (Deng, et al., 2015). Thus, transparency takes on a particular importance in the fundraising discussion for NGOs.
When it comes to understanding how the relationships between trust, transparency and intentional behaviors play out in non-governmental organizations there seems to be a little gap in
the literature. Namely, most of the literature discussing the relationship between transparency and trust either is concerned with employee trust or public trust towards businesses or
government institutions. Despite the fact that literature clearly shows that trust, transparency and motivation to donate are correlated, the exact dynamics of these 3 concepts are still very much underresearched in the NGO industry. Consequently, this thesis will try to fill the gap as well as add to the already existing literature by studying transparency, trust and motivation to donate in the NGO-sector. Hence, the question this research is concerned with is the following:
RQ: How does organizational transparency and public’s trust towards an organization affect motivation to donate to non-governmental organizations?
In order to study the relationships mentioned above, this paper looked at organizational websites of three NGOs: Amnesty International, War Child and Survival International. All of these organizations are non-profit companies concerned with different aspects of human rights. Namely, Amnesty International is an NGO fighting against human rights abuses worldwide. War Child is mostly concerned with children’s rights in conflict areas and Survival International is fighting for the rights of indigenous people. The research question will be answered through collecting data using surveys.
Theoretical Framework
Trust & Transparency
In today’s organizational climate where corporations experience more and more scrutiny and pressure from the public to be open, the issue of public trust and credibility becomes prioritized in most of the corporations. Trust, within and across organization is considered to be a predictor of whether or not the organization will stay viable (Porta, et al., 1996). Furthermore,
research conducted on trust has continuously demonstrated positive outcomes such as employee satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness in a corporation (Shockley-Zalabak et. al, 2000). Thus, trust within and towards an organization has been shown to benefit the
organization’s relationships with all of its stakeholders. Therefore, organizations strive to utilize particular communication and public relations strategies to appear as trustworthy as possible. Trust has been given varying definitions in the literature. Mayer et al. (1995) described trust as willingness to be vulnerable to a trustee while having positive expectations of the trustee’s intentions to perform an action, which is important to the trustor. Cummings and Bromiley (1996), on their turn, defined trust as an individual’s or a group’s belief that another individual or a group “makes good-faith efforts to behave in accordance with any commitments, both explicit and implicit”. The authors went on to describe other facets of trust being honest in negotiations and not taking advantage of other individuals or groups. These very definitions will be used for this study. Although the Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI) designed by Cummings and Bromiley (1996) concerns organizational units, like employees, the definition of trust they developed still fits well in the theoretical structure of this research since does not focus on one’s trustfulness, but rather focuses on the importance of an organization’s attitudes and behavior when measuring trust.
Apart from the aforementioned definition, Cummings and Bromiley (1996) have also developed a multidimensional definition of organizational trust, which includes 3 dimensions: 1) belief that an individual or a group makes efforts to behave in compliance with any
commitments, 2) belief that an individual or group is truthful in all sorts of interactions and 3) belief that an individual or group does not take advantage of others.
Since being more open as an organization has been found to generate a greater trust among the public, the concept of transparency has been given much attention in stakeholder management literature as it is directly linked to openness (Jahansoozi, 2006). Specifically, organizations recorded some very tangible benefits of being perceived as open and honest, of which, the most important outcomes were gaining trust of strategic stakeholders such as employees, customers and investors (Rawlins, 2008). Apart from empirical research showing positive link between organizational trust and transparency, some real life companies have demonstrated this link as well. The oil company Shell, for example, suffered some major crises in mid-1990s, which led to a huge drop in public trust towards the organization. Consequently, the organization had to adapt to the changing external expectations and be more open and participatory in making decisions affecting local communities. When this approach was
implemented, the company was able to recover relationships with its stakeholders (Jahansoozi, 2006). The example of Shell is in line with the research finding that organizational transparency positively impacts the level of trust and accountability (Cremer & Dewitte, 2002).
In the organizational context, transparency is explained as both a relational characteristic as well as an environmental condition (Jahansoozi, 2006). Like organizational trust, transparency as well has been given varying definitions in the academic literature. For instance, while
financial market researchers study transparency as disclosing monetary policy decisions, social psychologists analyze it in the context of negotiations (Schnackenberg & Tomlinson, 2014). However, one aspect that all definitions agree on is that transparency is about sharing
information. Therefore, relying on Schnackenberg and Tomlinson (2014) research, the following definition of organizational transparency will be employed in this study: “transparency is the perceived quality of intentionally shared information from a sender”. Just giving information,
however, is not enough for an organization to employ transparency. That is to say, transparency and disclosure are not the same concepts, since transparency becomes beneficial only when develops understanding rather than solely increasing information flow (Balkin, 1999).
Since transparency is such a multi-faceted and broad concept, when it comes to
operationalization of the concept, there seems to be a great variance in the literature. While some scholar focus on increased information disclosure (Eijffinger & Geraats, 2006), others stress the accuracy of the provided information (Walumbwa et al., 2011), the understandability of
information (Potosky, 2008) or consider the combination of information, participation and accountability altogether to be the base for transparency (Balkin, 1999). Florini (2000), on the other hand, gave a quite simple and straightforward definition of transparency, labeling it as “the opposite of secrecy”.
Although, as already discussed, research has shown that organizational transparency and trust are correlated and that increased transparency very often leads to more trust, it is important to treat these concepts separately. Pirson and Malhotra (2011) conducted a study where they assumed transparency to be a dimension of trustworthiness when measuring the relationship between transparency and trust. The findings indicated that when transparency is considered to be a dimension of trustworthiness, it is actually not related to trust (Schnackenberg & Tomlinson, 2014). Consequently, transparency is not a facet of trust and should be treated as a distinct
concept.
Trust & Transparency in the Non-profit Sector
Organizational trust as well as organizational transparency are usually studied in the context of business corporations as it has become vital for profit-driven companies to demonstrate that apart
from financial performance, trust with their stakeholders is on top of the corporate agenda as well. However, public trust issues are not exclusive to business-consumer framework as non-profit organizations have been recently struggling with the same issue. Particularly, a survey conducted in 2017, which included 32,200 respondents from 28 different countries has shown that only 53% of respondents had trust in NGOs, which is a substantial decline from 66% of 2014 results (Cornish, 2017). Likewise, the Public Relations Coalition (2003), after recording a drop in trust and credibility in organizations, recommended to make trust a board-level
governance issue and to create an extensive process for organizational transparency (Rawlins, 2008). Since transparency and openness have been closely tied to trust in communication literature, some public relations organizations came forward with recommendations for companies to implement transparency for a better relationship with their stakeholders. The Edelman Trust Barometer (Edelman Public relations, 2012) has been frequently referring to transparency as an organizational tool to increase trust among different stakeholders (Rawlins, 2008).
Organizations that voluntarily provide financial information are usually perceived as open, trustworthy and accountable (Lee & Joseph, 2013). With the growing influence of NGOs, the pressure to become more transparent, especially in the financial reporting is growing as well. For NGOs, transparency is a symbol for accountability and a very crucial facet as well (Hale, 2013) and, therefore, financial transparency has now become a frequently applied way of self-regulation by many non-profits (Bothwell, 2004).
Although, non-profit organizations have very different goals from the profit-driven ones, some factors and determinants for voluntary financial disclosure still remain the same for both industries (Behn et al., 2010). Behn et al., in their exploratory study tried to illustrate why some
non-profit organization are more prone to engage in extensive financial reporting than others. The results of the study indicated that larger organizations, organizations with higher
contribution ratio and more debt are more likely to provide audited and transparent financial reporting. Finally, the study concludes that increased financial reporting of non-profit
organizations might increase the company’s credibility and likewise, non-accessibility can lead to decrease in public confidence. These consequences can be very harsh, since funding from stakeholders is crucial for any non-profit organization to successfully operate.
Trust, Transparency & Motivation to Donate
Deng et al., (2015) researched the credibility crisis among Chinese human service
organizations to see whether or not organizational transparency has any effect on donations. The researchers using data from Transparency on Grassroots Organizations in China, designed a survey and after having conducted their analysis of 821 grassroots human service organizations they found that greater transparency leads to more donations and grants. Zhuang et al. (2014) proposed a theoretical model, which suggested that donations to charity organizations are positively linked with the extent of fundraising disclosure of those organizations. Some other studies have as well demonstrated a relationship between organizational transparency and financial contributions of donors. Lin (2009) after having studied 37 non-profit organizations concluded that transparency is positively linked to the donation income of those organizations. Specifically, the study revealed that every one-point increase in organizational transparency led to 143,000 USD donation income. These numbers show how a communication strategy like transparency can result in very tangible monetary benefits for organizations operating in the
non-profit sector, by encouraging behavior of donating among different publics. Therefore, the first hypothesis of this research is as follows:
H1: Increased transparency will lead to stronger motivation to donate
As already discussed above, NGOs heavily rely on public funding and, therefore, public trust should be maintained by any means to make sure the organization is receiving enough donations. Trust has been shown to be directly linked to motivation to donate. Particularly, a survey aimed to study the Hungarian population’s relationships with NGOs found that trust towards an organization is the third most important motivating factor for people to make donations (Koncz, 2005). Increased transparency, on the other hand, can as well lead to more donations becoming a guarantee for donors that their contributions are not being misused (Lawrence & Nezhad, 2009). In order to see what role transparency and accountability play in making contributions to a non-profit organization, Stone and Willbanks (2012) examined 96 websites of non-profits. They concluded that out of 96 organizations very few actually provided comprehensible information on their websites, which can hinder donations from different publics. Thus, the second hypothesis developed for this study is as follows:
H2: Increased trust will mediate the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate Relying on the aforementioned discussion of the literature and hypotheses a conceptual model is introduced outlining the expected relationships. The model can be found in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Conceptual model of the relationship between Transparency, Trust and Motivation to Donate
H2 H2
H1
Based on the conceptual model and discussed literature above the following hypotheses were formulated:
H1: Increased transparency will lead to stronger motivation to donate
H2: Increased trust will mediate the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate
Method Research Design
An online survey was generated using already existent and previously tested scales and sub-scales (Appendix 1). First, respondents were given a short introduction to the aim of the research. Then, they were asked to follow the links to the websites of 3 organizations and read the
information on financial transparency. Real-life organizations were selected to better understand how transparency is communicated to the public by companies.
Three non-governmental organizations were chosen to study for this research. Amnesty International, War Child and Survival International were the organizations this thesis was concerned with. These very organizations were selected on the basis that all of them operate in
Motivation to donate Transparency
the human rights sector, which, was assumed to have made the comparability more appropriate. Moreover, another reason these particular organizations were chosen was that all of them had a summary of financial reporting on their websites apart from annual reports. That is, in addition to very explicit annual reports, these companies had sections on their websites concerning financial transparency, and, therefore, were suitable to be compared and integrated in surveys. Moreover, the information on the websites of the organizations to some extent had similar length. This was taken into account to minimize comparability limitations as much as possible.
Procedure
The data were collected during a period of 20 days. Snowball sampling and convenience
sampling were implemented in order to gain responses. Namely, people who were easy to reach were contacted first. That is, the survey was sent to Facebook friends and friends of friends. In addition to this, the questionnaire was posted in “survey exchange” groups on Facebook, where researchers would exchange with surveys to get necessary number of responses. This was
especially helpful, since this research did not have any specific criteria concerning demographics or educational background with the only requirement being the knowledge of English. Therefore, it made the data collection process a little easier, as the survey could be taken by anyone. All in all, through personal network and Facebook groups 110 responses were collected in total.
The survey consisted of 25 questions, measuring various aspects of organizational communication, including transparency, organizational trust and one’s motivation to donate. As already mentioned, it included links to the websites of the chosen organizations. Therefore, filling out the entire survey lasted between 15 and 20 minutes.
Sample
Data were collected among 110 respondents. However, 50 responses were incomplete, meaning that the participants did not reach until the end of the survey. Since this study aims to understand the differences among the three chosen organizations, only complete responses were kept. Thus, after deleting unfinished responses, the data contained 60 participants.
88.3% of respondents were females and 11.7% were males. Moreover, there was a noticeable variance in the age of respondents ranging from 18 years old to 38 years old
(M=23.47, SD=3.43). The most common age group were 21 and 22-year-old people, respectively forming 18.3% and 21.7% of all the respondents. When it comes to educational background, most of the respondents were either college graduates or have conducted some postgraduate work. And finally, the participants represented 22 different nationalities, with the Dutch and Armenians being the most frequent groups, forming 28.3% and 11.7% of all the participants, respectively.
Measurements Transparency
Transparency was measured using the scale of the Rawlins (2008) study, through a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The concept of transparency was measured through 4 sub-scales: accountability, substantial information, participative efforts and secrecy. The first 3 scales were combined together and called “positive transparency”, as they were all were measuring the positive aspects of transparency. Secrecy was tested for scale measures separately. This decision was made because when tested for factorability as one scale,
too many items were loading on the same factor with similar moderate values, making the interpretation of factorability chaotic. Treating the scales separately solved this issue.
Positive transparency scale consisted of 14 items. Accountability was measured through 4 items. An example question from the sub-scale measuring accountability was “The website presents information in language that is clear”. Then, substantial information was measured through 7 statements. An example was “The website provides information in a timely fashion”. And finally, participative efforts were measured through 3 items, including statements like “The website makes it easy to find the information I need”.
The secrecy scale, included 4 statements and tried to understand if the website was perceived to hide any information. An example statement of secrecy was “The website often leaves out important details in the information it provides”. The same scales were used for all organizations.
All transparency scales were tested and calculated per organization separately. This is because when it was tested as one scale with all the organization together, the assumptions of factorability were not met. Namely, The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of adequacy was .50, which is below the required value to have acceptable factorability. Moreover, when it was tested as one scale, 11 factors were extracted, with very many items loading simultaneously on 3 or 4 factors. Therefore, it was decided to measure the scales separately per organization. The scales were calculated in the same way for each organization, to make comparability possible.
When tested for factorability eigenvalues were used to determine how many factors to extract. The rotated factor matrix showed that the item “The website provides information that can be compared to the previous performance” did not load on any factor for all organizations, and, therefore, was deleted before redoing the factor analysis. After redoing the factor analysis 3
factors were extracted for Amnesty International and Survival International with each item clearly loading on one component. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of adequacy of positive transparency scale for Amnesty International was .74 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (78) =298.52, p<.001), whereas for Survival International KMO was .75 with a significant value of Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 (78) =402.14, p<.001). And lastly, for War Child 5 factors were extracted with KMO showing .63 with Bartlett’s test of sphericity being significant (χ2 (78) =300.75, p<.001).
Then, the factor analysis of secrecy demonstrated that all 4 items strongly loaded on only one factor for each organization. All 3 organizations showed to have similar KMO values. Namely, KMO for Amnesty International was .67 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (6) =94.67, p<.001). For War Child KMO was .65 with a significant Bartlett’s test of
sphericity (χ2 (6) =50.71, p<.001). And finally, Survival International showed acceptable factorability as well with KMO value being .63 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity being significant (χ2 (6) =84.31, p<.001).
All organizations tested high for reliability of positive transparency. Namely, Amnesty International (M=3.57, SD=.40) and War Child (M=3.42, SD=.47) had almost the same reliability score (Cronbach’s α = .79), while Survival International (M=3.16, SD=.55) demonstrated even a higher value of reliability for positive transparency (Cronbach’s α=.86).
The secrecy scale for Amnesty International (M=2.57, SD=.72), (Cronbach’s α=.80), War Child (M=2.70, SD=1.49), (Cronbach’s α=.72) and Survival International (M=2.74, SD=.69), (Cronbach’s α=.74) appeared to be reliable as well.
Organizational trust was measured again using the study by Rawlins (2008). The scale aimed to understand how respondents perceive organizational competence, integrity and goodwill. The scale was conducted using a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The scale included 10 statements. An example statement from the sub-scale of integrity was “Sound principles seem to guide the behavior of this organization”. Competence was measured through items like “I feel very confident about the skills of this organization”. And finally, an example of an item measuring goodwill was “The organization is interested in the well-being of people like me, not just itself”. The scales were combine to be tested for measurements. This is because the rationale and the hypotheses of this research were not concerned with the separate subscales of trust.
This same scale was used for all 3 organizations. In order to be consistent in the analytical approach, trust as well was measured for reliability and factorability separately per organization.
Factor analysis of trust demonstrated that for all 3 organizations 2 factors were extracted. Moreover, the scale for Amnesty International with KMO value of .77 and significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 (45) =314.47, p<.001) as well as War Child with a KMO value of .83 and significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 (45) =275.38, p<.001) appeared to have good
factorability. The scale for Survival International as well remained unchanged, since KMO was .79 Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (45) =360.43, p<.001).
Moreover, all organizations had a similar and high value of reliability for trust. Amnesty International (Cronbach’s α=.88), (M=3.70, SD=.57) and War Child (Cronbach’s α=.88),
(M=3.52, SD=.55) had almost the same reliability score, while Survival International appeared to be even more reliable (Cronbach’s α=.90), (M=3.30, SD=.65).
Motivation to donate
One’s intention to donate was measured through using and modifying the scale used in Coyle & Thorson (2001) article. The scale consisted of 4 items and used a 5-point Likert scale going from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The scale included statements such as “After reading the financial information it is very likely that I will return to the website of Amnesty International”.
All the items loaded on one factor for all the organizations. The scale measuring a respondent’s motivation to donate to Amnesty International showed high factorability. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of adequacy of .73, with Bartlett’s test of sphericity being significant (χ2 (6) =132.72, p<.001). War Child as well as Survival International showed good factorability too, with respective KMO values of .83 and .79. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant for War Child (χ2 (6) =214.44, p<.001) as well as it was for Survival International (χ2 (6) =230.83, p<.001).
Analysis
First, the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate was tested through a regression analysis. This means that positive transparency and secrecy were first entered into a regression model together. Then, in order to see whether or not mediation was observed, first, separate regression analyses were run between positive transparency and trust (a), secrecy and trust (a), trust and motivation to donate (b), positive transparency and motivation to donate (c) and secrecy and motivation to donate (c). Then, trust was added to see how much of the effect of transparency on motivation to donate runs through trust. Therefore, the effect of trust on
secrecy (b’). And finally, the effect of positive transparency on motivation to donate and the effect of secrecy on motivation to donate with trust being controlled was tested as well (c’). If the relationship between IV and DV was not significant, further mediation was not tested.
Sobel’s Z was calculated to see how much of the influence of transparency on motivation to donate is removed when controlling for trust. These values, however, should be interpreted with caution because of having a small sample.
Results
Transparency as a Predictor for Motivation to Donate
A multiple linear regression analysis was run to study the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate. A significant regression equation was found (F(2, 57) =12.759, p < .001) with an adjusted R2 of .285 for Amnesty International. This means that 28.5% of variance in motivation to donate could be explained by positive transparency and secrecy. While positive transparency, b = 1.10, t = 4.09, p < .001 was a significant predictor for motivation to donate, secrecy, b = -0.35, t = -2.33, p = .817, on the other hand, was not. This same trend was observed for the other two organizations. Namely, War Child had a significant regression model (F(2, 57=3.539, p = .036) where 9.3% of the dependent variable could be explained by positive transparency and secrecy. Positive transparency, b = 0.65, t = 2.25, p = .028 had a significant relationship with motivation to donate, while secrecy b = -0.75, t = -0.40, p = .693, again did not.
And finally, the regression model of transparency showed to be significant for Survival International as well (F(2, 57) =14.225, p < .001) with 31% of the variance in DV explained by IV. Similar to War Child and Amnesty International, in this model as well, only positive transparency, b = 1.02, t = 5.30, p < .001, predicted motivation to donate. Secrecy, b = 0.15, t =
0.98, p = .330, had a non-significant relationship. Therefore, H1 can be partially supported, as all organizations showed partial significant relationship between transparency and motivation to donate.
Transparency and Trust as Predictors for Motivation to Donate
For Amnesty International the linear regression model was significant (F(3, 56) =10.226, p < .001) with an adjusted R2 of .319. The effect of positive transparency, b = 1.13, t = 5.09, p < .001; b’ = 0.87, p = .004; Sobel’s Z = 2.97, p = .003 and secrecy, b = -0.37, t = -2.63, p = 001; b’ = -0.01, p = .934; Sobel’s Z = -2.24, p = .002 on motivation to donate changed when trust, b = 0.36, t =0.25, p = .054, 95% CI [-0.01, 0.73], was added to the regression model. Namely,
positive transparency had a partial mediation with motivation to donate, meaning the value of the relationship changed but the relationship still remained significant. On the other hand, secrecy alone, had a negative significant relationship with motivation to donate but after adding trust, the relationship became non-significant. Hence, full mediation was observed here.
When controlled for trust, b = 1.30, t =5.84, p < .001, 95% CI [0.85, 1.74], War Child showed a significant regression equation (F(3, 56) =15.119, p < .001) with an adjusted R2 of .418. Namely, positive transparency, b = 0.70, t = 2.65, p = .001; b’ = -0.99, p = .710; Sobel’s Z = 4.10, p < .001 went from a significant relationship with motivation to donate to a
non-significant one. Therefore, it demonstrated full mediation. Secrecy, b = -0.25, t = -1.38, p = .174, however, had an initial non-significant relationship with motivation to donate and that is why further mediation was not looked into.
Lastly, multiple regression analysis was run to understand if trust mediates the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate for Survival International. The
regression model was significant (F(3, 56) =18.842, p < .001) with an adjusted R2 of .476. Consequently, 47.2 % of variation in motivation to donate could be explained through transparency and trust. Positive transparency b = 0.97, t = 5.24, p < .001; b’ = 0.41, p = .007, Sobel’s Z = 4.88, p < .001 showed full mediation, as trust b = 0.80, t =4.37, p < .001, 95% CI [0.43, 1.16], turned the relationship between positive transparency and motivation to donate from significant to insignificant. Here as well, secrecy b = -0.83, t = -0.46, p = .644 did not have a significant relationship with the dependent variable and, therefore, mediation was not interpreted.
Based on the discussed relationships above, H2 can be partially supported as all
organizations showed either full or partial mediation for positive transparency. The differences between the scores of 2 models, that is before and after entering trust, are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1
Transparency and Trust as Predictors for Motivation to Donate
Amnesty International
War Child Survival
Internatio nal Predictor Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model2 Positive transparency 1.10*** 0.87** 0.65* -0.99 1.02*** 0.41 secrecy -0.35 ns -0.07 ns 0.15 ns trust 0.36 1.30*** 0.80*** Significance levels: p< .05* p< .01** p< .001***
Differences of Transparency Means Among Organizations
In order to understand if there was a significant difference between the means of perceived transparency among organizations one-way repeated measures of ANOVA were used. The test compared scores on transparency for Amnesty International, War Child and Survival
International. The means and standard deviations are presented in Table 2. There was a significant effect for positive transparency [Wilk’s Lambda = .71, F(2, 58) = 12.01, p< 0.001, multivariate partial eta squared = .29] but not for secrecy [Wilk’s Lambda = .94, F(2, 58) = 1.70, p = 0.191, multivariate partial eta squared = .06] among the 3 organizations.
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics for Positive Transparency and Secrecy with Scores for Amnesty International, War Child and Survival International
Positive Transparency Secrecy
Organization Mean Standard deviation Mean Standard deviation Amnesty International 3.57 .41 2.57 .72 War Child 3.42 .47 2.70 .72 Survival International 3.16 .55 2.74 .69 N=60
Demographics as Predictors in the Mediation Effect of Trust on Transparency and Motivation to Donate
Gender, age and educational background were controlled to see if they play any role in one’s motivation to donate. The results demonstrated that none of the demographic variables had a significant relationship with motivation to donate in any of the three organizations. In other words, a respondent’s gender, age or educational background was not a determining factor in the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate. The values for control variables can be found in Appendix 2.
Discussion
This research paper aimed to uncover the effects that transparency had on motivation to donate and to what extent trust played the role of a mediator in the relationship. Based on the literature it was expected that transparency would lead to more motivation to donate. It is conclusive that based on the scale transparency was measured through, it partially leads to more motivation to donate. That is, items that measuring accountability, substantial information and participative efforts or also used as positive transparency were observed to significantly lead to more intention to donate to NGOs. This finding is in line with previous literature stating that organizational transparency leads to more donations and grants to NGOs (Deng et al., 2015). Therefore, the more respondents felt like the organization was being transparent about financial reporting the more they were inclined to make a donation to that organization. This was expected, as previous literature has also indicated that showing people where their donations are going leads to more satisfaction, organizational commitment and trust (Sisco & McCorkindale, 2013). Moreover, all tested organizations showed a significant relationship between positive transparency and
When it came to perceived secrecy, however, respondents were not prone to donate more if there was less secrecy. That is, for all organizations no significant relationship was found between secrecy and motivation to donate. As transparency is sometimes defined to be “the opposite of secrecy”, it was expected that secrecy, as a sub-scale of transparency would have a significant effect on one’s motivations to donate. This expectation was based on the research indicating that organizations that are not transparent lead to less positive behavioral intentions than those who practice transparency (Auger, 2014). The results of this thesis, however, indicated that the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate could not be predicted by the sub-scale of secrecy. This could be a result of small sample size or the few number of organizations included in this study.
The second purpose of this paper was to understand whether or not trust towards an organization played the role of a mediator on the relationship between transparency and
motivation to donate. The results showed that trust served either as a partial or full mediator for positive transparency for all organizations. This means that the relationship between independent and dependent variables either partially or fully ran through trust. In other words, one’s trust towards an NGO predicted whether the organizational transparency would lead to more/less intention to donate to that organization. These findings are in line with the previously discussed literature, where organizational transparency has proved to have significant effects on trust and behavioral motivations (Auger, 2014), as well as trust leading to positive behavioral outcomes like donations towards an organization (Koncz, 2005). Consequently, most of the relationships outlined in the conceptual model designed for this research proved to be statistically significant. Since secrecy did not significantly predict motivation to donate for any of the organizations, it, therefore, could not be controlled for trust.
The three studied organizations significantly differed from each other in terms of the perceived transparency as well as secrecy, with Amnesty International having the highest score on transparency and the lowest score on secrecy. However, as this research was not concerned with the exact differences between organizations and because there were very few organizations involved, the differences were not studied. These results, nonetheless, showed that the
relationship between transparency and motivation to donate can be organization-specific and future research can focus on organizational traits to better understand what role they play in the relationship of transparency and one’s motivation to donate.
Limitations and Future Research
A few limiting factors should be taken into account when discussing the results of this research. First of all, the sample size is the most evident limitation of this study. Namely, because of limited time, the sample size was quite small, and, hence, the results cannot be generalized. Therefore, bigger scope research is needed to fully understand the link between transparency, trust and motivation to donate.
As already mentioned, only three organizations were included in this study, which tells very little about possible organizational traits that might be a significant factor in the researched relationships. Therefore, future research should try to include a wider range of NGOs to better understand the non-profit industry-specific characteristics.
Then, a pre-existing bias among respondents might have prevailed. That is, since real-life organizations were used in the surveys, respondents might have already had some positive or negative feelings towards these organization, which, in turn, could have made their responses biased. In addition, other factors, such as the design of the website or the length of the text could
have influenced the respondent’s evaluation of the read information. In other words, the comparability of websites could not be controlled.
And finally, since the survey was mostly sent to other students or exchanged with other researchers, most of the respondents had academic background. Thus, more diversity in
demographics can be considered another area to look into for future research.
Conclusion
With more and more public pressure for organizations to go transparent, transparency has become a key component of organizational communication both in theory in practice. Most of the previous research have tried to study direct relationships between transparency, trust and behavioral intentions. This paper aimed to further explore the relationship of these concepts and see if the already researched correlation between transparency and motivation to donate runs through trust towards a specific organization. This study has demonstrated the prominence of trust in studying the concept of organizational transparency. Consequently, this thesis can be viewed as an addition to already existing research concerned with transparency, trust and
behavioral intentions. At the same time, it can benefit communication practitioners, giving them more insight about the multi-faceted nature of transparency and how the organization can benefit when being transparent.
To conclude, transparency leads to more motivation to donate, while secrecy has not appeared to lead to less motivation. Trust forms a significant part in the dynamics of the relationship between transparency and motivation to donate.
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Appendix 1
Survey Items
Survey items measuring transparency
Communication efforts are participative
1. The website provides detailed information
2. The website asks for feedback about the quality of information 3. The website makes it easy to find the information I needed
Communication efforts provide substantial information
1. The website provides information in a timely fashion 2. The website provides information that is relevant
3. The website provides information that can be compared to the previous performance 4. The website provides information that is complete
5. The website provides information that is easy to understand 6. The website provides information that is reliable
7. The website provides accurate information
Communication efforts provide accountability
2. The organization is forthcoming with information that might be damaging to the organization
3. The organization provides information that can be compared to industry standards 4. The organization admits when it has made mistakes
Communication efforts are secretive
1. Often leaves out important details in the information it provides
2. Provides information that is full of technical language that is confusing
3. Provides information that is intentionally written in a way to make it difficult to understand
4. Provides only part of the story
Survey items measuring trust
Organization shows competence
1. I feel very confident about the skills of this organization
2. This organization has the ability to accomplish what it says it will do 3. This organization is known to be successful at the things it tries to do
Organization shows integrity
1. This organization treats people fairly and justly
2. This organization can be relied on to keep its promises
3. Sound principles seem to guide the behavior of this organization 4. This organization does not mislead people
1. Whenever this organization makes a decision I know it will be concerned about people like me.
2. This organization is interested in the well-being of people like me, not just itself
3. I believe this organization takes the opinions of people like me into account when making decisions
Survey items measuring motivation to donate
Intention to return to a website
1. After reading the financial information it is very likely that I will return to the website of Amnesty International
2. I will return to Amnesty International's website next time I want to donate to a cause
Intention to donate
1. It is very likely that I will donate to Amnesty International 2. I will definitely donate to Amnesty International
Appendix 2
Regression Coefficients and Descriptive Statistics of Control Variables
Regression Coefficients of Control Variables on Motivation to Donate
Amnesty International
War Child Survival International Predictors Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Age -0.03 -0.07 -0.06 Gender 0.32 0.09 -0.10 Educational background -0.07 0.20 0.08 Significance levels: p< .05* p< .01** p< .001***.
Descriptive Statistics of Control Variables
Predictors Mean SD Age 23.47 3.43 Gender 1.88 0.32 Educational background 5.30 1.38 N=60
