Research and Publication Trend of Trust on Donations in Non-Profit Organisations:
A Preliminary Study Based on Scientometric Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24191/gading.v29i2.825Keywords:
donation , funds , non-profit organisations, trustAbstract
Recent news reports have highlighted cases of misappropriated funds and donations by administrators of non-profit organisations (NGOs) for personal gains than charity purposes. This can have a significant influence on the public's trust decisions regarding donations and contributions. The purpose of this preliminary study was to analyse the trend of academic articles of this topic. A scientometric analysis using CiteSpace was employed to retrieve data from the Web of Science (WoS) database and analysed to determine prominent authors, journals, publishers, affiliations, countries, and research areas since this is the most reputable database for journal publications. From 222,259 articles that has been published in the WoS, only 9 articles met the final search strings retrieval process and been analysed. The results revealed that India ranked first among the top ten countries with active research endeavours and publications regarding trust on donations in NGOs. Meanwhile, Elsevier emerged as a publisher with the highest number of publications. These findings serve as a strategy and framework of reference for future research by recognising the patterns and trends of current research. It also presents an evolutionary model to direct theoretical developments in this area of study.
References
Alhidari, I. S., Veludo-de-Oliveira, T. M., Yousafzai, S. Y., & Yani-de-Soriano, M. (2018). Modeling the effect of multidimensional trust on individual monetary donations to charitable organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(3), 623-644.
Al-Nowairah, N., & Saji, T. G. (2024). NGO funding in the last decade: a bibliometric review of the SCOPUS database. Discover Sustainability, 5(1), 459.
Aryadoust, V., and Ang, B. H. (2021). Exploring the frontiers of eye tracking research in language studies: a novel co-citation scientometric review. Comput. Assisted Lang. Learning, 34, 898–933. doi: 10.1080/09588221.2019.1647251
Badar, K., Frantz, T. L., & Jabeen, M. (2016). Research performance and degree centrality in co-authorship networks. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 68(6), 756-771. https://doi.org/10.1108/ajim-07-2016-0103
Benli, B., & Kocaman, R. (2026). Key Drivers Underpinning the Donation Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review and Agenda for Future Research Using the TCCM Framework. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 50(1), e70157.
Bilgin, Y., & Kethüda, Ö. (2022). Charity social media marketing and its influence on charity brand image, brand trust, and donation intention. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 33(5), 1091-1102.
Chandrasiri, T., Croes, N., Bandara, W., Turetken, O., Ostern, N., Rosemann, M., & Voss, M. (2026). Beyond Profit: The Role of Benevolent Business Processes in Building Long-Term Firm Success. In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 489-504). Springer, Cham.
Chen, C., Song, M. (2019) Visualizing a Field of Research: A Methodology of Systematic Scientometric Reviews. PLoS One, 14(10), e0223994. 10.1371/journal.pone.0223994
D’Souza, C., Valladares, L., Ratten, V., Nanere, M., Ahmed, T., Nguyen, N., & Marimuthu, M. (2023). The effects of religious participation and brand image on commitment to donate to faith-based charities. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 35(1), 81-109.
Faiz, I. A., & Taib, F. (2025). Developing a public accountability assessment model for Islamic non-government organisations (INGOs) in Indonesia: an information perspective. Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting. Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFRA-07-2024-0486
García-García, L. A. and Rodríguez-Salvador, M. (2020). Disclosing main authors and organisations collaborations in bioprinting through network maps analysis. Journal of Biomedical Semantics, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13326-020-0219-z
Hassan, M.K., Muneeza, A. and Sarea, A.M. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 on Islamic social finance’, in COVID-19 and Islamic Social Finance, (pp.9–23), Routledge, New York.
Hassan, S.H., Masron, T.A. and Mohamed, N. (2018). Antecedents of trust toward the attitude of charitable organization in monetary Philanthraphic Generation-Y. Asian Academy of Management Journal, 23(1), 53–78.
Hosmer, L. T. (1995). Trust: The Connecting Link between Organizational Theory and Philosophical Ethics. The Academy of Management Review, 20(2), 379–403
Kassim, M., Embi, N. A. C., Haron, R., & Ibrahim, K. (2019). Internal factors affecting continuous donations among cash waqf donors. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(9), 1304-1311.
Kim, M. & Walker, M. (2013) The influence of professional athlete philanthropy on donation intentions. European Sport Management Quarterly, 13(5), 579-601.
Mayzira, C., Lubis, A., Pratama, I., & Zulyadi, R. (2026). The Impact Of Green Brand Image Implementation and Legal Compliance On Customer Loyalty At MSME Grama Sphere Medan. EKOMBIS REVIEW: Jurnal Ilmiah Ekonomi dan Bisnis, 14(1), 1113-1122.
Melewar, T. C., Foroudi, P., Gupta, S., Kitchen, P. J., & Foroudi, M. M. (2017). Integrating identity, strategy and communications for trust, loyalty and commitment. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 572-604.
Middleton, G. H., & Lee, H. T. (2020). Non-profit organization’s innovative donor management-the identification of salient factors that drive donor loyalty. Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 14(1), 93-106.
Mo, L., Sia, C., Lin, W., Zheng, X., & Peng, K. (2024). Describing and mapping the research trend of scientific publications on arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy across four decades: a bibliometric analysis. Clinical Cardiology, 47(12). https://doi.org/10.1002/clc.70051
Palmer, A. (2014). Principles of Services Marketing. McGraw-Hill Education. London, UK:McGraw Hill.
Pertiwi, D. (2025). Maximizing customer value and corporate image through strategic marketing and distribution in public water services. Jurnal Riset Bisnis dan Manajemen, 18(2), 364-375.
Purwakananta, M. A., Patrianti, T., Satispi, E., & Purnamasari, O. (2025). Baznas Reputation Management To Restore Public Trust:(A Case Study on McDonald’s Indonesia’s Donation for Palestine). International Journal of Social Sciences, 1(2), 238-252.
Putra, A., Juansih, J., & Mudzakkir, M. F. (2023). 20 years of performance in police organization: a bibliometric analysis. RSF Conference Series: Business, Management and Social Sciences, 3(3), 216-226. https://doi.org/10.31098/bmss.v3i3.666
Runan, Z., & Sijia, L. (2022). How Situational Cognition, Communication Behaviour and Public Trust of NPOs Affect Individual Donation Intention: The Case of Anti-COVID-19 in China. China Nonprofit Review, 13(1-2), 1-12.
Saraswat, D., Patel, F., Bhattacharya, P., Verma, A., Tanwar, S., & Sharma, R. (2022). UpHaaR: Blockchain-based charity donation scheme to handle financial irregularities. Journal of Information Security and Applications, 68, 103245.
Sargeant, A., & Sargeant, Y. (2017). Donor Retention and Development. In Fundraising Principles and Practice. (Second Edi, pp. 392–434). John Wiley & Sons,Inc.
Silvertown, J., Tallowin, J., Stevens, C., Power, S. A., Morgan, V., Emmett, B., ... & Bardgett, R. (2010). Environmental myopia: a diagnosis and a remedy. Trends in ecology & evolution, 25(10), 556-561.
Soós, S. (2013). Age-sensitive bibliographic coupling reflecting the history of science: the case of the species problem. Scientometrics, 98(1), 23-51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1080-y
Stranges, P. M. and Vouri, S. M. (2017). Impact of co-investigators on pharmacy resident research publication. Pharmacy Practice, 15(2), 928-928. https://doi.org/10.18549/pharmpract.2017.02.928
Sweileh, W. M., Al-Jabi, S. W., AbuTaha, A. S., Zyoud, S. E. H., Anayah, F. M., & Sawalha, A. F. (2017). Bibliometric analysis of worldwide scientific literature in mobile-health: 2006–2016. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 17(1), 72.
Tella, A., Oyeniran, S., & Ibironke, E. S. (2021). Determinants of web search effectiveness from the perspective of library and information science students. International Journal of Library and Information Services, 10(2), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijlis.20210701.oa13
Thomas, S., Patel, R., & Bhatt, V. (2023). Private-label grocery buyers’ donation intentions and trust in CRM campaigns: an empirical analysis by employing social identity theory. Society and Business Review, 18(3), 401-421.
Utomo, D. S., Paoprasert, N., & Yousuk, R. (2023). The Impact of Social Media Strategies of Non-Profit Organizations on Covid-19 Donation Intention in Indonesia. Jurnal The Messenger, 14(1), 76-91.
Valtakoski, A. (2015). Industrial Marketing Management Initiation of buyer-seller relationships : The impact of intangibility, trust and mitigation strategies. Industrial Marketing Management, 44, 107–118.
Yaacob, A., & Ling, G. J. (2021). A bibliometric analysis of 68 years of research on charitable giving. International Journal of Modern Trends in Social Sciences, 4(15), 21-42.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Gading Journal for the Social Sciences (e-ISSN 2600-7568)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
License Terms
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
