Public interest theory has argued that lack of trust in companies may reduce support for free markets. The literature did not address, however, the underlying causes of lack of trust and support of free markets in customer’s perceptions of virtuousness in economic actors. Combining public interest theory with virtue theory and stakeholder trust theory of organizations, we surmise that if customers perceive that employees of companies have insufficient due care for customers’ interests, the perceived trustworthiness of those companies will be low. Customers will then be more inclined to support government regulation in that particular sector or industry. In this paper, we test the relevance of these relationships for the banking sector using a representative sample of 5844 respondents in the Netherlands. We find that if bankers are perceived as persistent in their due care for customers, this encourages a perception that banks are trustworthy, which in turn induces support for free markets in banking and reduces the call for government regulation. An important management implication of our research is that banks should foster due care by means of employee-virtue training programs to enhance trust, thus generating more support for free market operations in the banking sector.

中文翻译：

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感知到的应有注意对荷兰银行业的可信度和自由市场支持的影响

公共利益理论认为，对公司缺乏信任可能会减少对自由市场的支持。然而，文献没有解决客户对经济行为者的道德观念缺乏信任和自由市场支持的根本原因。结合公共利益理论、组织美德理论和利益相关者信任理论，我们推测，如果客户认为公司员工对客户利益的关注不足，那么这些公司的感知可信度就会较低。然后，客户将更倾向于支持该特定部门或行业的政府监管。在本文中，我们使用荷兰 5844 名受访者的代表性样本来测试这些关系与银行业的相关性。我们发现，如果银行家被认为坚持为客户提供应有的关怀，这会鼓励人们认为银行是值得信赖的，这反过来会引发对银行业自由市场的支持，并减少对政府监管的呼声。我们研究的一个重要管理意义是，银行应通过员工美德培训计划培养应有的谨慎，以增强信任，从而为银行业的自由市场运作提供更多支持。