IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/gpprii/v43y2018i3d10.1057_s41288-018-0079-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Making and Breaking of Trust in Pension Providers: An Empirical Study of Pension Participants

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik P. Dalen

    (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
    Tilburg University)

  • Kène Henkens

    (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
    University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen
    University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

Trust in pension institutions is pivotal in making pension decisions, like saving or enrolling in pension programs. But which traits of pension institutions matter in making or breaking trust in providers like pension funds, banks or insurance companies? This paper presents an empirical analysis of the underlying forces of trust in private pension providers in the Netherlands. Based on a large-scale survey among pension participants, we show that the perceived integrity, competence, stability and benevolence of pension providers matter in assessing their trustworthiness. First, pension funds are more trusted than banks or insurance companies, a difference that is primarily related to weights attached to perceived levels of integrity and stability. Second, higher educated participants have a significantly higher propensity to trust pension providers than lower educated. Third, transparency as perceived by participants plays virtually no role in establishing trust.

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik P. Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2018. "The Making and Breaking of Trust in Pension Providers: An Empirical Study of Pension Participants," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 43(3), pages 473-491, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:43:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1057_s41288-018-0079-2
    DOI: 10.1057/s41288-018-0079-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41288-018-0079-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41288-018-0079-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Niclas Berggren & Henrik Jordahl, 2006. "Free to Trust: Economic Freedom and Social Capital," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 141-169, May.
    2. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2014. "The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 5-44, March.
    3. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter & Henkens, Kene, 2018. "Do people really want freedom of choice? : Assessing preferences of pension holders," Other publications TiSEM 448e8a93-9ded-401f-9da0-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Williamson, Oliver E, 1993. "Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 453-486, April.
    5. Robert J. Shiller, 2012. "Finance and the Good Society," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9652.
    6. Carin Cruijsen & Jakob Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2016. "Trust and Financial Crisis Experiences," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 577-600, June.
    7. David-Jan Jansen & Robert Mosch & Carin Cruijsen, 2015. "When Does the General Public Lose Trust in Banks?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 127-141, October.
    8. Henriette Prast & Federica Teppa & Anouk Smits, 2012. "Is Information Overrated? Evidence from the Pension Domain," DNB Working Papers 360, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    9. Henkens, Kène & van Dalen, Hendrik P. & Ekerdt, David J. & Hershey, Douglas A. & Hyde, Martin & Radl, Jonas & van Solinge, Hanna & Wang, Mo & Zacher, Hannes, 2018. "What We Need to Know About Retirement: Pressing Issues for the Coming Decade," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 58(5), pages 805-812.
    10. Federica Teppa & Corrie Vis, 2012. "The CentERpanel and the DNB Household Survey: Methodological Aspects," DNB Occasional Studies 1004, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    11. Paul Gerrans & Douglas A. Hershey, 2017. "Financial Adviser Anxiety, Financial Literacy, and Financial Advice Seeking," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 54-90, March.
    12. Machiel van Dijk & Michiel Bijlsma & Marc Pomp, 2008. "The price of free advice," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(14), pages 1889-1903.
    13. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Henri L.F. de Groot & Anton B.T.M. van Schaik, 2004. "Trust and economic growth: a robustness analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(1), pages 118-134, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ralph Stevens & Jennifer Alonso Garcia & Hazel Bateman & Arthur van Soest & Johan Bonekamp, 2022. "Saving preferences after retirement," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/342267, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Christophe Courbage & Christina Nicolas, 2021. "Trust in insurance: The importance of experiences," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(2), pages 263-291, June.
    3. Westerhout, Ed, 2020. "Pension Reform in the Netherlands," Other publications TiSEM 083befc2-9d79-4181-9e10-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Westerhout, Ed & Ponds, Eduard & Zwaneveld, P.J., 2021. "Completing Dutch Pension Reform," Other publications TiSEM 4ee13c87-dd61-481b-bcb7-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Wu, JunBiao & Zhang, YuYvette & Lin, BenXi, 2021. "The Impact of Trust in Government on Rural Residents’ Participation in China's New Rural Pension Scheme," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315288, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Westerhout, Ed, 2020. "Pension Reform in the Netherlands," Discussion Paper 2020-012, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    7. Alonso-García, Jennifer & Bateman, Hazel & Bonekamp, Johan & van Soest, Arthur & Stevens, Ralph, 2022. "Saving preferences after retirement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 409-433.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter & Henkens, Kene, 2017. "The Making and Breaking of Trust in Pension Providers : An Empirical Study of Dutch Pension Participants," Other publications TiSEM cb47a5d0-d1c2-4f4e-8d6d-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter & Henkens, Kene, 2018. "The making and breaking of trust in pension providers : An empirical study of pension participants," Other publications TiSEM a23d8c7c-5857-48ee-a1ab-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter & Henkens, Kene, 2018. "Do people really want freedom of choice? : Assessing preferences of pension holders," Other publications TiSEM 448e8a93-9ded-401f-9da0-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos & Tullio Jappelli & Maarten van Rooij, 2020. "Trust in the Central Bank and Inflation Expectations," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(6), pages 1-37, December.
    5. van der Cruijsen, Carin & de Haan, Jakob & Jonker, Nicole, 2022. "Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected public trust? Evidence for the US and the Netherlands," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1010-1024.
    6. Carin van der Cruijsen & Jakob de Haan & Ria Roerink, 2021. "Financial knowledge and trust in financial institutions," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 680-714, June.
    7. Carin van der Cruijsen, 2017. "Payments data: do consumers want to keep them in a safe or turn them into gold?," DNB Working Papers 563, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    8. Markus Leibrecht & Hans Pitlik, 2018. "Is Trust in Companies Rooted in Social Trust, or Regulatory Quality, or Both?," John H Dunning Centre for International Business Discussion Papers jhd-dp2018-03, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    9. Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Julius Agbor, 2016. "Does Trust Matter for Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Cross-Section of Countries," Economies, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, March.
    10. Florian Deuflhard & Dimitris Georgarakos & Roman Inderst, 2019. "Financial Literacy and Savings Account Returns," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 131-164.
    11. Eiji Yamamura, 2012. "Government Size and Trust," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(1), pages 31-56, December.
    12. D’Hernoncourt, Johanna & Méon, Pierre-Guillaume, 2012. "The not so dark side of trust: Does trust increase the size of the shadow economy?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 97-121.
    13. Antonio C. David & Carmen A. Li, 2010. "Exploring the links between HIV|AIDS, social capital and development," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(7), pages 941-961.
    14. Diepstraten, Maaike & van der Cruijsen, Carin, 2019. "To stay or go? Consumer bank switching behaviour after government interventions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-33.
    15. Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos & Tullio Jappelli & Maarten van Rooij, 2020. "Trust in the Central Bank and Inflation Expectations," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(6), pages 1-37, December.
    16. Dillingh, Rik & Prast, Henriette & Rossi, Mariacristina & Urzì Brancati, Cesira, 2017. "Who wants to have their home and eat it too? Interest in reverse mortgages in the Netherlands," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 25-37.
    17. Wang, Lanlan & Gordon, Peter, 2011. "Trust and institutions: A multilevel analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 583-593.
    18. Carin van der Cruijsen & Jakob de Haan & Ria Roerink, 2021. "Financial knowledge and trust in financial institutions," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 680-714, June.
    19. Maarten van Rooij & Jakob de Haan, 2016. "Will helicopter money be spent? New evidence," DNB Working Papers 538, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    20. Wahl, Fabian, 2012. "Why it matters what people think: Beliefs, legal origins and the deep roots of trust," FZID Discussion Papers 52-2012, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:43:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1057_s41288-018-0079-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.