Which organizations do people think are most trustworthy?

If you’re anything like the people surveyed for the Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Monitor for 2022, you’re likely to place most faith in technology companies and the least in social media platforms.

The report – which gathered opinions from more than 21,500 people across 29 nations – found that after tech platforms, pharmaceutical companies and banks are the second and third most trusted organizations.

People’s perceptions of pharmaceutical companies and banks have improved since 2018, with both now seen as more trustworthy.

But it’s bad news for some sectors, with a larger proportion of people finding them untrustworthy rather than trustworthy. These include public services, oil and gas firms, the media, governments and social media companies.

Tech companies received a positive response from more than a third of respondents, with only 19% saying they do not trust these firms. But faith in the integrity of big tech has fallen to 34%, from 38% in the 2018 survey.

The US, home of Silicon Valley and some of the world’s leading technology companies, is one of the few countries where more people distrust tech organizations (29%) than trust them (27%).

Almost a third of respondents have confidence in pharmaceutical companies, up from 25% in 2018.

Banks are trusted by 28% of those surveyed, up from 20% in 2018. And while only one in five respondents say they trust their government, this is still an increase from 14% in previous results.

Trust in pharmaceutical companies has risen by six percentage points since 2018, with almost a third of those surveyed saying they have faith in the sector. This increase could be due to recognition of vaccine development efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19, the survey notes.

Asian nations such as Malaysia, China, India and Japan, together with Saudi Arabia, show the strongest levels of trust in pharmaceutical companies, while support is lowest in Chile and several European nations.

At the other end of the trust thermometer, media and social media companies are the least trusted organizations, winning the confidence of fewer than one in five respondents, while around two-fifths say they find such firms untrustworthy.

A third of those surveyed in India and Malaysia trust social media companies, but this falls to below 10% in European countries such as the Netherlands and France. The results show there is greater distrust of social media companies than trust in almost all the countries surveyed.

Organizations that demonstrate qualities including transparency, responsibility and reliability are most trusted, according to those surveyed.

The most important driver of trust in an organization is consistency in keeping its promises, with this attribute cited by more than two in five people surveyed. Responsibility also featured highly as a characteristic that helps create trust, particularly among respondents in Asian nations such as South Korea (54%), Malaysia (46%), China (44%) and Japan (43%).

A sense of shared values and efforts to promote sustainability while suppressing misinformation are also seen as important qualities, each receiving positive responses from 16% of respondents.