• The effects of web page donation link (donation button) design on aid agency transactional trust was examined in a survey and in two experiments. Experiment 1 compared three donation button designs, which were developed on the basis of study 1, which was a survey of 559 charity websites, and found no significant effects on rated transactional trust. Experiment 2 attempted to manipulate transactional uncertainty through donation button design by incorporating crisis/need and aid agency response photographs. These button design manipulations significantly increased rated transactional trust. In both experiments, transactional trust ratings were significantly correlated with donation compliance ratings. These results suggest that transactional trust can be enhanced through the considered design of the donation button, and increasing transactional trust in this manner may result in more online donations.

Two experiments investigated donors' willingness to split their donation into a proportion that the charity could use for administration costs and a portion that could be used to deliver the charity's services. Experiment 1 found that participants in the condition given the opportunity to split their donation into an amount for administration costs and an amount for service delivery gave a significantly smaller proportion of their overall donation to administration costs, when compared with participants in another condition who were simply asked what proportion of their donation they would be happy for the organization to use for administration costs. Experiment 2 manipulated the amount of information participants (donors) received about the breakdown of a charity's administration costs but found no significant change in the amount donated to administration. Both experiments show that donors were willing to donate approximately 15% of their donation directly to charity administration costs. Results are discussed in terms of understanding how a charity's financial management might be influencing donor's trust in the charity and providing charities with a degree of certainty in the proportion of donations they can spend on administration costs.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.