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IJBM
30,2 Public attitudes towards the UK
banking industry following the
global financial crisis
128
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
Centre for Research in Marketing, London Metropolitan University,
Received 13 September 2011
Accepted 21 December 2011 London, UK

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to establish the antecedents of changes in public attitudes
towards the UK banking industry following the global financial crisis.
Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was administered to 1,066 people querying
their attributions of blame for the crisis, attitudes towards the banking industry, levels of anger,
knowledge of the crisis, degrees of moralistic trust, political orientations, prior perceptions of the
banking industry’s reputation, and whether they had personally suffered as a result of events. A
structural equation model covering these matters was developed and estimated.
Findings – A substantial deterioration in the favourability of public attitudes towards the banking
industry seems to have occurred following the crisis. However, certain groups of respondents were
much less critical of the industry’s role in the crisis than were others.
Research limitations/implications – The banking industry of just a single country was
considered. Participants only commented on their attitudes towards the banking sector and not their
actual banking behaviour.
Practical implications – Collectively, the banking industry needs to advertise the fact that failures
on the part of public regulators played a critical role in the advent of the crisis. The industry should
take joint action to influence the mass media’s interpretations of the banking sector’s current activities.
Originality/value – This was the first study to explore how members of the public interpret the
post-crisis identity and behaviour of the banking industry as a whole, rather than individual
companies within it. The results contribute to knowledge concerning the determinants of attitude
change vis-à-vis the banking sector and how customers might be segmented in terms of their
perceptions.
Keywords Banking industry, Global financial crisis, Attitude formation, Collective image,
Reputation management, Banking, Banks, Finance, Attitudes, United Kingdom
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
This paper examines the personal circumstances and characteristics potentially
affecting the favourability of an individual’s attitudes towards the UK banking
industry consequent to the financial crisis that began in 2007/2008. Public attitudes
concerning UK banks after 2007/2008 may be expected to have changed substantially
considering the cataclysmic global recession that the crisis triggered – the worst since
International Journal of Bank the Great Crash of 1929 (Akinbami, 2011). Media reports at the time and currently
Marketing (see, for example, Wray, 2008; BBC Business Online, 2009; Crowley, 2010) have
Vol. 30 No. 2, 2012
pp. 128-147 suggested that the British public’s evaluation of the calibre of the banking industry has
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0265-2323
declined, with both the integrity and the competence of the banking industry being
DOI 10.1108/02652321211210877 called into question. The media placed the blame for the crisis largely on the major US,
UK and West European banks, accusing them of having capitalised on loopholes in Attitudes
regulatory systems to engage in excessively risky activities (Taylor, 2009; Verick and towards UK
Islam, 2010), of short-termism, irresponsible financial management, and the
accumulation of unsustainable levels of debt. banking

1.1 Need for research into public attitudes towards the banking industry
Research into public attitudes towards the banking industry following the crisis is 129
important for several reasons. Attitudes towards business affect both actual behaviour
and behavioural intentions (Li et al., 2009; Puccinelli et al., 2009; Einwiller et al., 2010).
In the present context, behaviour could involve savings levels (Cox, 2007), consumer
decisions on purchases of financial services products (Jayawardhena, 2004), the use of
non-bank organisations for banking activity (McGoldrick and Greenland, 1992; Li,
2001; Zeneldin, 2005; Leiser et al., 2010), longevity of relationship with financial
services organisations, public word of mouth (Czellar, 2003), and shareholders’
willingness to purchase equity in the banking sector (Ryan and Buchholtz, 2001). A
plethora of literature has claimed that various psychological traits and
socio-demographic factors affect an individual’s attitude towards economic events
(see Leiser et al., 2010). Bank industry managers need to know about these traits and
factors and how they influence attitudes, as procedures for improving the public’s
evaluations of the integrity of the banking sector may then be implemented (see
Cornelissen et al., 2007: Walsh et al., 2009). Knowledge of such matters should
moreover enable bank industry managers to communicate and interact more
effectively with politicians and officials in government regulatory bodies (Bravo et al.,
2009).
1.1.1 Public attitudes towards banks as a collective entity. The study explored the
public’s attitudes towards the UK banking sector as a whole, and without
distinguishing between various bank categories (retail, investment, online, corporate,
private, etc.) or organisations that (allegedly) were more responsible for the crisis than
others. Owens et al. (2010, p. 477) explained, on the basis of social identity theory
(Tajfel and Turner, 2003), how a group of organisations can have a collective identity
“located in the larger socio-political context”. Situations could elicit certain common
public perceptions of a group even when group members had different histories and
characteristics. Several considerations are likely to induce the public to regard all
banks as belonging to the same category of organisation (see Worcester, 1997). For
example, a wide range of institutions now undertake multiple forms of banking, hence
blurring distinctions between cash management banking, retail, investment and
private banking, etc. The banking industry’s extensive use of direct mail and
relationship marketing has encouraged people to view all banks as offering the same
products and, by implication, to share similar organisational attributes (Mols et al.,
1997; Sandler, 2002). Research has established that customers conceptualise the same
major “corporate associations” when considering all types of bank (Bravo et al., 2009
p.327). These common associations will extend to assumptions of similar behaviour
(Vincente et al., 2004), shared traits (cf. Cornelissen et al., 2007) and, in the present
context, collective culpability. Adams et al. (2010) also observed how the public could
hold negative attitudes towards an entire industry sector as if it were a collective.
Critically, moreover, information about specific category members could influence
perceptions of the total category (see also Cornelissen et al., 2007; He and Baruch, 2010).
IJBM 2. Possible determinants of attitudes towards the banking industry
30,2 following the crisis
Three streams of academic literature were examined to identify possible determinants
of public attitudes towards the banking industry following the crisis, namely literature
concerning crisis management, image and reputation, and psychological attribution.
This review suggested the following potential influences on attitudes. Interactions
130 among some of the posited influences are to be expected, as discussed in later sections.

2.1 Prior perceptions of the banking industry

According to a review of bank image and reputation research literature completed by
Worcester (1997), “the image of banks (in the 1960’s and 1970’s) was as good as gold, as
sound as the dollar or sterling” (p. 146), and continued to be sound into the 1980s and
1990s. A good reputation endows an entity with a “stock of perpetual and social assets”
(Fombrun and van Riel, 2004, p. 32) capable of:
.
protecting the entity in part against reputational damage arising from a crisis
(Coombs and Holladay, 2006); and
.
facilitating the repair of damage after a crisis has occurred (Barton, 2001).

Research has found that, in general, the prior reputations of organisations impact
heavily on public perceptions of corporate responsibility for harmful crises (Walsh
et al., 2009; Grunwald and Hempelmann, 2010). Specifically, attributions of blame tend
to be stronger among people with low prior perceptions of an organisation’s reputation
(Coombs and Holladay, 2006; He and Baruch, 2010).
If an individual’s pre-crisis perception of the reputation of the banking industry was
high, the person might selectively filter information about responsibility for the crisis
to fit in with his or her prior views (Grunwald and Hempelmann, 2010). Disconfirming
evidence might be ignored or inaccurately interpreted (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000).
Hence the individual might give the banks “the benefit of the doubt” and reduce his or
her attribution to them of culpability for the crisis. Conversely a person with low initial
perceptions of the banking industry’s reputation might readily accept negative
information as confirmation of his or her prior assessment. Prior reputation might be a
particularly important determinant of the post-crisis evaluations of banks among
people who had little knowledge of the economic and political circumstances that
surrounded events. This could arise because reputation furnishes a cue that helps a
person to bundle information or substitute missing information pertaining to an
entity’s credibility and reliability (Helm and Mark, 2007). Cue utilisation theory
(see Grunwald and Hempelmann, 2010) suggests that reputation proffers useful
information to individuals who are uncertain about the causes of a crisis situation and
who are confronted with multiple and sometimes contradictory descriptions.
The above considerations lead to the following hypotheses.
H1. Current evaluations of the banking industry tend to be more favourable
among people who, prior to the crisis, perceived the banking industry to have
a high reputation.
H2. The strength of the impact of high pre-crisis reputation on current evaluations
is stronger among people with little knowledge of the details of the crisis.
2.2 Personal impact of the crisis Attitudes
Individuals who experienced a personal loss in consequence of the financial crisis are towards UK
perhaps more likely to have paid close attention to its details than people who merely
observed the crisis unfold but were not personally affected. In the words of Gritten banking
(2011), “for those who had the rug pulled swiftly from under their feet, it will take the
financial services institutions a long time to rebuild meaningful relationships with
customers” (p. 99). For some, the crisis was the precursor to redundancy, reductions in 131
earnings, loss of interest on savings, inability to raise a mortgage and/or other
distressful events. Affected individuals may be anticipated to feel highly involved with
the crisis and hence to be deeply interested in information about it. Attitudes towards
the banks’ role in the crisis may be very strong among people exhibiting this particular
behavioural characteristic (Einwiller et al., 2010). Significant personal financial losses
affect perceptions (Chaiken et al., 1989; Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Li et al., 2009) as they
impact on several important aspects of people’s lives in areas likely to influence their
views concerning the assumed causes of a loss. The level of loss incurred as a result of
the crisis will vary from person to person, leading presumably to variations in
perceptions of blame for the crisis. These variations in perceptions will have the
capacity to affect other variables. Leisner and Drori (2005) observed how, in general,
the “socio-economic location” of the individual was a “crucial variable of the analysis of
representations of economic events” (p. 181). Employees who stood to lose their jobs
would pay much closer attention to events than others. Hence:
H3. People who were personally affected by the crisis tend currently to hold less
favourable evaluations of the banking industry than people who were not
personally affected by the crisis.

2.3 Knowledge of the crisis

Public perceptions of economic events are heavily influenced by public discourse
(Leisner and Drori, 2005), which in the present context includes reports in the mass
media, conversations with friends or colleagues, “mere exposure” to headlines, and
statements by politicians (cf. Samu and Krishnan, 2010). Media coverage is a major
source of knowledge about business crises and an important determinant of public
attitudes towards them (Carroll and McCoombs, 2003). Indeed, in the absence of
first-hand experience, the news media are likely to have been a person’s primary source
of information about the banking industry’s involvement in the crisis. Einwiller et al.
(2010) argued the existence of an integral relationship between the news media and the
larger social and economic systems, predicting that public perceptions of an economic
issue depend substantially on:
.
the volume of reports the news media devotes to the issue; and
.
the prominence attached to the characteristics of the organisations involved.

Individuals want to know about certain business issues and often desire a direction
vis-à-vis how they should interpret events. According to Weaver (1980), the degree of a
person’s desire for direction affects the strength of the media’s influence. Desire for
direction will be higher the greater a person’s interest in the subject and the less clear
the situation. Interest in the banking crisis is likely to have been most prominent
among people who were personally affected by it. Such individuals will probably have
IJBM been especially attentive to news reports about the situation’s consequences (Helm,
30,2 2007). As media coverage of the banks’ role in the crisis was largely hostile, the above
implies the following hypotheses:
H4. People who obtained large amounts of knowledge about the banks’ role in the
crisis during and since the crisis tend currently to have less favourable
evaluations of the banking industry than people with little knowledge.
132
H5. The strength of the link between the level of a person’s knowledge of the crisis
and his or her current evaluations of the banking industry is greater among
individuals who were personally affected by the crisis.

2.4 Anger at the banks’ behaviour

Numerous commentators have noted that emotions of anger frequently characterised
individuals’ perceptions of the banking industry’s behaviour before and during the
crisis (see, for example, Brummer, 2009; Cooke and Younglai, 2010; Cukierman, 2010;
Leiser et al., 2010; Scott, 2009). Allegedly, anger impels people both to create negative
stereotypes of whoever is causing their anger and to process information through a
stereotyped lens (Bodenhausen et al., 1994; De Cremer and Van Hiel, 2010). The greater
the level of anger, the more negative and biased a person’s judgement (Bower, 1991).
Presumably, therefore, an individual who suffered financially as a result of the crisis
(e.g. through losing a job, not being able to raise a mortgage, low returns on savings,
collapse of share prices) will be more angry with the banks than people who were not
personally affected, and hence will hold more negative stereotypes (cf. Bodenhausen
et al., 1994). Accordingly:
H6. People who felt a great deal of anger at the banks’ role in the crisis currently
tend to have less favourable evaluations of the banking industry than people
who did not feel a great deal of anger at the banks’ role.
H7. People who were personally affected by the crisis tend to feel more anger at
the banks’ role than people who were not personally affected.

2.5 Attributions of responsibility for the crisis

Attribution involves assigning a cause to an event and then drawing inferences about
causal entities (Puccinelli et al., 2009). The ascription of causes to events influences
attitudes and, according to Coombs (2007), motivates behaviour that will be positive if
an entity is presumed not to be responsible for the damaging event, and vice versa. In
the present context an individual might attribute the crisis to intrinsic weaknesses and
misbehaviour within the banking sector (cf. Boin, 2004), or to external situational
factors largely beyond the banks’ control. The attribution that occurs is important
given that:
.
perceptions of who is to blame for a crisis are known to exert powerful influences
on attitudes (Grunwald and Hempelmann, 2010); and
.
a sector’s image will suffer if the sector is deemed responsible for a crisis (Payne,
2006; Hatzakis, 2009).

Weiner (1985) suggested that the more serious a difficulty for an individual the more
likely that the person will attribute blame for the problem. This proposition was
confirmed in relation to the financial crisis by a survey completed by Leiser et al. Attitudes
(2010), who also identified socio-economic status and knowledge of the economic side towards UK
of the financial crisis as important determinants of how the crisis was perceived by
members of the public. Higher socio-economic status was associated with the belief banking
that external factors were to blame for the crisis, rather than “stupidity” or
“immorality” on the part of the banks (p. 136). Low status individuals tended to
moralise and to attribute blame to the banks. The same pattern of results applied to 133
people with high versus low knowledge of the economic aspects of the issue.
Individuals who had been personally affected by the crisis tended to see the banks’
behaviour as immoral. Also, and as previously mentioned, attributions of blame have
been found to vary inversely with prior perceptions of reputation (Coombs and
Holladay, 2006; Grunwald and Hempelmann, 2010). Thus:
H8. People who attribute most of the blame for the crisis to the banks tend (a) to
have less favourable current evaluations of the banking industry than people
who do not attribute most of the blame to banks, and (b) to have held poor
prior perceptions of the banking industry before the onset of the crisis.
H9. Attribution of blame for the crisis to the banks tends to be greater among
people who (a) were personally affected by the crisis, (b) had extensive
knowledge of the crisis, and (c) are of low social status.

2.6 Political orientation

A person’s political orientation can act as an important predictor of his or her attitudes
towards economic issues (Bartlett et al., 2009; Adams et al., 2010). This is because
orientations towards, for example, liberalism or conservatism often reflect an
individual’s fundamental attitudes concerning economic philosophies, capitalism, state
regulations of industry, etc. (Conover and Feldman, 1981). It may be appropriate to
associate politically conservative attitudes with more benign perspectives on the
banking industry’s responsibility for the crisis and thus to assume that politically
conservative people will be more trusting of the sector (McCloskey and Zaller, 1984;
Adams et al., 2010). Hence:
H10. Politically conservative people (a) tend to have more favourable current
evaluations of the banking industry than others, and (b) are less likely to
attribute responsibility for the crisis to the banking industry.

2.7 Moralistic trust

Hosmer (1995), Adams et al. (2010) and others (see Uslaner, 2010) have argued that
individuals who possess high degrees of “moralistic trust” are more likely to trust other
people and organisations in questionable circumstances than individuals who do not
exhibit this tendency. A person who is high on moralistic trust believes in the goodwill
of others and will treat a wide range of entities as trustworthy, even if these entities are
unknown to the individual (Uslaner, 2010). Moralistic trust hinges on the belief that
people and organisations are fundamentally moral, thus creating expectations of
honest behaviour (Seligman, 1997). The moralistically trusting assume “that the world
is a benign place, that the motives of others are honourable, and that others will behave
properly and not take advantage” (Uslaner, 2000, p. 572). Hence they are less generally
cynical about businesses than persons with little moralistic trust. Unlike the cynical,
IJBM people high in moralistic trust do not presuppose that businesses are selfish and
30,2 uncaring (see Grazioli and Jarvenpaa, 2003) and will not question the motives of others
(Adams et al., 2010). Accordingly:H11(a). People high on moralistic trust tend to
attribute less blame for the crisis to the banks than people low on moralistic
trust.Moralistic trust is said to be a stable trait, developed in early childhood (Seligman,
1997), and does not depend on recent experience (Uslaner, 2010). The direction of the
134 impact of high moralistic trust on attitudes towards the banks after the onset of the
crisis is uncertain. On the one hand it might be anticipated that moralistic trusters who
experience a breach of trust will not normally change their view of the offending party,
but instead will give the other party the benefit of the doubt (see Stolle, 2002).
Alternatively, it could be that the moralistically trusting feel especially let down by the
banking industry’s behaviour which, in the words of Uslaner (2010 p. 115), involved
“playing fast and loose with financial instruments that few understand”. Gritten (2011)
similarly noted how certain people felt deeply betrayed “by a system and by
institutions that had promised to protect them and their assets” (p. 99). For operational
purposes it is hypothesised here that:H11(b).

3. The dependent variables

Two categories of dependent variables were employed. The first related to attitudinal
changes in a member of the public’s trust in the banking industry and the second to an
individual’s general affect towards the industry consequent to the crisis. Trust lies at
the heart of the relationship between the public and the banking industry (McGoldrick
and Greenland, 1992; Li, 2001; Cox, 2007; Leiser et al., 2010). Indeed, the very survival
of financial institutions depends on the public’s willingness to trust their actions
(Coombs and Holladay, 2002). Research has identified trust in competence and trust in
integrity as the key dimensions of public trust in the banking sector (see Cox, 2007;
Stamp, 2008; Roy and Shekhar, 2010; Sung and Kim, 2010). Competence concerns the
banking industry’s skills and abilities (Sung and Kim, 2010); integrity involves the
sector’s character, fairness and credibility (Belanger et al., 2002). Bankers who are seen
to lack integrity are likely to be perceived as dishonest and seeking only selfish gain
(cf. Poppo and Schepker, 2010). Integrity will normally be evaluated at the
organisational and/or sectoral level and not in relation to individual bank employees
(cf. Trevinyo-Rodriquez, 2007). In addition to trust, the study employed standard
measures of general affect towards organisations that assessed a person’s overall
feelings (good or bad) about the banking industry.

4. The study
A questionnaire was developed and pre-tested via:
.
discussions with managers in the research department of a leading UK
commercial bank that had itself recently completed an in-house study of the
impact of the financial crisis on the bank’s image; and
.
administration of the questionnaire to 50 people drawn from the sampling frame
used for the main investigation.

A summary of the questionnaire is presented in the Appendix, which also shows the
literature sources used to derive the items in various sections. Where items were
adapted from pre-existing inventories the adaptations were made following the
application of standard modification procedures (see Engelland et al., 2001). The Attitudes
sample comprised several elements, though only people over the age of 23 years were towards UK
questioned to ensure that all the participants would have recollections of the crisis
during their adult years. banking
Two hundred and sixty-seven completed questionnaires were obtained through
street interviews conducted around Metro stations in various districts (some
prosperous, some socially deprived) in Greater London. Two hundred and thirteen 135
responses were gathered from customers at two branches of a leading UK commercial
bank that was participating in the research. Students at the authors’ home university
were requested to give copies of the questionnaire to their parents for completion, and
to ask their parents to “snowball” further copies of the document to acquaintances and
relatives. This resulted in a further 255 returns. (The university in question is a “mass
market” institution taking students from a wide range of social classes.) A further
121 responses came from a distribution of the questionnaire to administrative
employees (at all levels of seniority) at the authors’ university. Finally the
questionnaire was distributed via the Facebook pages of seven people connected
with the research, using an electronic version of the questionnaire constructed through
SurveyMonkey. Recipients were requested to pass on the questionnaire to their own
Facebook contacts. This generated 210 responses.
The overall 1,066-strong sample was assembled from an assortment of sources and
groups containing various socio-economic categories. To check whether the sample
was broadly representative of the more general adult population the distributions of
the ages and income levels of the non-Facebook participants were compared with data
for London as a whole (see Greater London Authority, 2011). A difference of just 3.1 per
cent was observed for the age comparison and 3.8 per cent for the income comparison,
indicating a reasonable degree of representativeness for this part of the sample. The
Facebook respondents had age and income profiles known to characterise Facebook
users in general (see Vasalou et al., 2010). The street and bank premises interviews
were undertaken by the authors, two research assistants, a bank employee, and
postgraduate market research students who were paid national rates for time spent on
the project. Standard statistical tests ( post hoc ANOVAs and t-tests for pairwise
comparisons) for differences in response patterns between the various groups of
participants did not reveal any significant disparities (p , 0:05). Data were collected in
2010 and early/mid-2011.

4.1 Formation of variables

The final questionnaire began with items concerning age, gender and income (which
was used as a proxy for socio-economic status), and an item (question 1b; see the
Appendix ) querying the behavioural variable concerning the extent to which a person
had been detrimentally affected by the crisis. Section 2 examined a respondent’s
attribution of blame for the crisis (five point agree/disagree scale). Items 2(a)-2(d) were
reverse-scored, so that section 2 offered an overall measure of the degree to which
deficiencies within and misbehaviour by the banking industry were blamed for the
crisis. A factor analysis of the eight section 2 items generated a correlated two-factor
solution (R ¼ 0:81), indicating that all eight items reflected the same latent construct.
The first factor contained items 2(e)-2(h) and explained 61 per cent of total variation;
IJBM the second factor contained items 2(a)-2(d) and explained 26 per cent. The Cronbach’s a
30,2 value for the eight items was 0.82, suggesting sound internal reliability.
As the four items for “knowledge of the crisis” (section 3(a)-3(d)) were of a factual
aggregative nature, they were averaged to form a single variable relating to this
matter. The same situation applied to the two “political orientation” items (4(a) and (b)).
(Unless otherwise stated, all constructs were measured using five-point agree/disagree
136 scales.) A factor analysis of the six “prior perceptions of the banking industry” items
gave a unidimensional solution (l ¼ 4:1, a ¼ 0:86), as did a factor analysis of section 6
items (a) to (d) concerning feelings of anger at the banks’ behaviour (l ¼ 3:1, a ¼ 0:90).
The moralistic trust items factored into two correlated (R ¼ 0:79) dimensions, i.e. items
(a)-(c), concerning trust in others as a whole (l ¼ 3:0); and items (d), (g), (h) and (i),
involving trust in businesses (l ¼ 4:4). This left two outliers, i.e. items (e) and (f), that
failed to load significantly on any other factor. Hence items (e) and (f) were removed
from the moralistic trust measure. The Cronbach’s a for the seven remaining items was
0.81, indicating that the items reflected the same underlying construct and that all
could be incorporated into a single measure of moralistic trust.
Appendix items 8.1(a)-8.1(e) relate to trust/distrust in the banking industry’s
competence; items 8.1(f)-8.1(k) involve trust in integrity; and items 8.2(a)-8.2(d) concern
general affect. (The document issued to participants jumbled these items and reversed
the direction of several of them so as not to influence the responses.) The 15 “Attitudes
towards the banks” items in section 8 were factor analysed and subjected to orthogonal
and oblique rotations. A two-factor solution emerged with the second factor containing
just a single significant item (h . 0:85 in both rotations), i.e. item 8.1( j) “is driven by
greed”. The Cronbach’s a value increased from 0.82 to 0.87 when item 8.1( j) was
removed. This suggests that “greed” was interpreted as a different construct to that
pertaining to the remaining items, and also that the respondents did not themselves
differentiate between trust in banks’ integrity, trust in banks’ competence, and general
liking (or dislike) of banks. Therefore the 14 section 8 items excluding greed were
averaged to form an overall measure of the favourability of a respondents’ attitude
towards the banks.

5. Results
Table I profiles the members of the five categories of the overall sample. It can be seen
that there were no notable disparities in the average responses of the various groups.
The figures cited in Table I for the income levels and demographics of the sample
members broadly match those for Greater London as a whole (see Office for National
Statistics, 2010). Although the mean income figures clustered around the London mean
average, the range of income was broad, with an approximately even split of incomes
across the four quartiles of the distribution. Twenty per cent of the respondents
reported having been badly affected by the crisis (scoring between 7 and 10 on the
relevant scale); 30 per cent of the replies relating to this matter fell in the bottom three
divisions. Lower-income people tended to indicate that they had been more severely
affected by the crisis than did better off people (R ¼ 2 0:27, p , 0:01). A quarter of the
sample agreed or strongly agreed that they were politically conservative (reflecting the
national average). Table I shows that, overall, the respondents blamed the banks for
the crisis rather than government, the economic system or “bad luck” (see section 2 in
the Appendix). Less than a third of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed (A/SA)
 Facebook
Total sample Street interviews Bank customers Parents and their Employees respondents
(n ¼ 1; 066) (n ¼ 267) (n ¼ 213) acquaintances (n ¼ 255) (n ¼ 121) (n ¼ 210)

Average age 39 37 39 48 39 30
Percentage male 48 51 48 54 44 43
Mean income from full-time
employment (£) 39,990 35,010 36,560 42,840 38,920 40,800
Mean scores for
Prior perception of the
banking industry 3.27 3.29 3.25 3.27 3.28 3.26
Knowledge of the crisis 3.78 3.70 3.71 3.88 3.83 3.75
Personal impact of the
crisis (11-point scale) 4.25 4.22 4.27 4.31 4.00 4.24
Attribution of blame to the
banks 3.25 3.20 3.30 3.31 3.22 3.26
Conservative political
orientation 2.65 2.64 2.68 2.71 2.48 2.54
Anger at the banks’
behaviour 3.67 3.75 3.70 3.75 3.59 3.54
Moralistic trust 3.33 3.30 3.35 3.28 3.36 3.34
Trust in banks’ competence 2.61 2.54 2.55 2.65 2.66 2.62
Trust in banks’ integrity 2.44 2.40 2.47 2.42 2.49 2.41
General affect 2.47 2.48 2.48 2.44 2.49 2.50

The participants
banking
Attitudes

137

Table I.
towards UK
IJBM that the crisis was caused mainly by poor government regulation rather than by the
30,2 banks (item 2(a)) or by the general economic system rather than the banks (item 2(b)).
The highest mean average score in section 2 concerned item (f), “wild speculation”
(mean ðM
¼ 3:09; A=SA ¼ 74 per cent), followed by item (e), “moral flaws” (M ¼ 2:96;
A=SA ¼ 72 per cent). Males were significantly more likely to attribute the cause of the
crisis to “wild speculation” than were females (M ¼ 3:43 and 2.83 respectively,
138 F ¼ 6:1, p , 0:001).
Section 8 of the questionnaire compared respondents’ attitudes towards the banking
industry before the crisis and at the present time. The major changes reported
concerned reductions in perceptions of the banking industry’s reliability (item 8(c),
M ¼ 2:14), competence (M ¼ 2.24), being “respectful of laws” (M ¼ 2.26), and
“accepting accountability” (item [g], M ¼ 2.26).

5.1 Test of the hypotheses

Table II gives the estimates of the model depicted in Figure 1, computed using the
AMOS 19 package. As the distributions of some of the variables were skewed
(see Table I) the bootstrapping facility of the AMOS package was employed to compute
the standard errors on the coefficients. Overall model fit was satisfactory: GFI ¼ 0:88;
AGFI ¼ 0:85; RMSEA ¼ 0:05.
In general the model shown in Figure 1 performed well. All the hypotheses were
accepted apart from H3, H5, H7 and H11(b). In the cases of H3, H5 and H7 (all
concerning personal impact of the crisis) the regression coefficients were insignificant
(p , 0:05); whereas the coefficient for H11(b) (involving the influence of moralistic
trust on favourability of attitudes) was significant but in the opposite direction to that
hypothesised. Examination of the data relating to “personal impact of the crisis”
revealed a relatively even distribution of responses across the 11 categories. Hence it
was not the case that there was insufficient variation in the data on the variable to be
able to connect it with others. Yet the variable failed to correlate significantly with any
of the “favourability of attitude” items or with anger. Unfortunately the present study
did not generate information capable of determining the reason(s) for the insignificance

Attribution of Favourability
responsibility Anger of attitudes

Socio-economic status (H9(c)) 2 0.30 (2.99)

Personal impact of the crisis (H9(a), H7 and H3) 0.31 (3.05) N/S N/S
Political orientation (H10(a) and H10(b)) 2 0.27 (2.32) 0.39 (3.54)
Moralistic trust (H11(a) and H11b)) 2 0.25 (2.55) 0.22 (2.09)
Knowledge of the crisis (H9(b) and H4) 0.30 (3.07) 2 0.37 (4.09)
Prior perceptions (H8(b) and H1) 2 0.24 (2.19) 0.30 (3.11)
Anger (H6) 2 0.45 (6.66)
Attributions of responsibility (H8(a)) 2 0.40 (5.91)

Moderators
Knowledge of the crisis times:
Table II. Prior perceptions (H2) 2 0.02 (4.99)
Tests of hypotheses: Personal impact of the crisis (H5) N/S
favourability of
post-crisis attitudes Note: t-values are shown in parentheses
 Attitudes
towards UK
banking

139

Figure 1.
Post-crisis attitudes

of “personal impact of the crisis” vis-à-vis attitudes. A speculative explanation might be

that individuals who were not badly affected by the crisis empathised and
sympathised heavily with people who had been badly affected, and thus exhibited the
same sorts of attitudes towards the banking industry.
High moralistic trust tended to increase rather than decrease post-crisis evaluations
of the banking industry (H11(b)). It seems, therefore, that moralistically trusting people
were indeed prepared to give the banks “the benefit of the doubt” in relation to their
behaviour during the crisis. (It is interesting to note in this connection that two-thirds
of the respondents whose replies fell in the top two categories for moralistic trust were
female and 46 per cent were under 35 years of age.) People high on moralistic trust
were significantly less likely than others to attribute blame for the crisis to the banking
industry (H11(a)).

6. Conclusion
The study examined contemporary public attitudes towards the banking sector among
groups of people segmented according to various criteria suggested by prior literature
on bank image and reputation. Overall the results support the relevance of these
criteria (anger, attribution of blame, etc.) to public attitudes following the crisis.
However, the impact of moralistic trust was in the opposite direction to that posited on
the basis of the past literature in the relevant fields. The favourability of the sample
members’ current attitudes towards the banking industry was found to depend
positively and significantly on the degrees of person’s conservative political
orientation, moralistic trust, and prior perceptions of the industry’s reputation.
Attitudes were influenced negatively and significantly by the individual’s knowledge
of the crisis, anger at the bank’s behaviour, and the extent to which blame for the crisis
was attributed to the banking industry. The last of these variables (attribution of
IJBM blame to the banks) was lower among high-income and politically conservative people
30,2 and greater among respondents with more knowledge of the crisis and individuals who
had suffered badly because of the crisis. Individuals with limited knowledge of the
crisis tended to rely more heavily on industry’s reputation when forming their current
attitudes towards the sector.

140 6.1 Managerial implications

People who attributed most of the blame for the crisis to the banks were more likely
than others to distrust and dislike the banking sector. It follows that the banks,
collectively, need to advertise the fact that failures on the part of government
regulators in Britain and abroad also played a crucial role. As knowledge of the crisis
emanated mainly from media reports, and because it is likely to be some time before
direct messages from the banking industry will be trusted, it seems appropriate for the
banks to seek to influence the media’s interpretations of the sector’s current activities.
This will have to be done by the sector as a collective entity; there were no indications
from the present study to suggest that respondents in any way distinguished between
institutions. Initiated in February 2011, ‘Project Merlin’ is perhaps the first sign of an
integrated response to image-related issues on the part of the UK banks. Under Project
Merlin, four of the nation’s largest banks (plus the Spanish based Santander bank,
which has extensive operations in Britain) have committed themselves to providing
‘greater transparency’, more help for small businesses, more lending in general and
greater contributions to regional economies and community projects. A primary aim of
this (government backed) project is to help restore public confidence in the banking
sector.
Anger contributed significantly to negative current evaluations of the banking
industry. It follows that the sector needs to find out the exact reasons for public anger
at the banks’ behaviour and then initiate public relations activities designed to mitigate
the public’s angry feelings. Anger is a multifaceted construct and it is not immediately
apparent which aspects of the crisis made people the most annoyed. Certain
high-profile individual bankers (notably Sir Fred Goodwin) received large amounts of
hostile press coverage, as did the practice of banks that allegedly were most
responsible for the crisis paying their senior managers multi-million pound bonuses.
Possibly, opprobrium attaching to certain named bankers transferred itself to the
organisations that employed them. Another implication of the results is that since
lower-income respondents were more likely to blame the banks for the crisis than were
the financially better off, public relations campaigns should be targeted more at poorer
than richer people.
Levels of moralistic trust were relatively evenly divided around the central value of
the distribution of responses for this construct in all participant categories. Thus, two
sizable market segments can be identified (high and low moralistic trust) on the basis
of the variable. Many of the high moralistic trust respondents were young and female.
Access to this large and important segment is available using the advertising media
read or viewed by younger females and through the employment of appropriate
messages. People low in moralistic trust can be addressed via messages crafted to
assuage their reservations. Around a quarter of the sample reported that they were
politically conservative (about the same percentage as for the UK population as a
whole), and political conservatism was associated with positive attitudes towards the
banks. Again this suggests possibilities for market segmentation. Media and messages Attitudes
can be selected that will appeal to the politically conservative, and the media and towards UK
messages involved can be quite different to those employed to influence the rest of the
population. Further market segments may be distinguished in terms of people’s levels banking
of anger at the banks, prior perceptions, and attributions of blame. Segmentation is
necessary to avoid the application of inappropriate one-size-fits-all reputation-building
advertising and other promotional activity. A range of different sorts of message and 141
image (based on the traits of various groups) is needed to appeal to various market
segments when seeking to influence perceptions of the integrity of the banking sector.
Overall the results indicate a general dissatisfaction with the banking industry after
the onset of the crisis. The banks were regarded as having engaged in wild speculation
and possessing serious moral flaws. Sample members’ perceptions of the banking
industry’s levels of reliability, competence, and respect for the law declined
substantially in the years following the crisis implying the need for the sector, as a
whole, to invest in reputation management. The results show that respondents whose
perceptions of the reputation of the banking industry prior to the crisis were sound had
significantly more favourable current attitudes towards the banks and that this
relationship was especially strong among people with little knowledge of economic and
political circumstances surrounding events. Moreover, the prior perception that banks
had a good reputation was associated with lower levels of attribution of blame for the
crisis to the banks. Thus reputation seemingly offered cues (see Grunwald and
Hempelmann, 2010) to individuals who were uncertain about the causes of the crisis
and who may have been confronted with conflicting accounts. Effective reputation
management will therefore be crucial for the sector’s future success, as public
assumptions that banks lack competence and integrity will harm the public’s
willingness to purchase financials products from banks, as opposed to non-bank
institutions (e.g. Tesco or Virgin) that offer financial services.

6.2 Limitations and areas for future research

The study examined attitudes towards the banking industry in just a single country. It
would be useful to replicate the study in other nations and continents. Styles of media
reporting and the influence of the media on public perceptions of economic issues
varies among countries, so it would be especially worthwhile investigating relevant
matters in countries with disparate media landscapes. Another limitation of the
research is that it required participants to comment only on their attitudes towards the
banks. It was not possible within the confines of an already crowded questionnaire to
explore the effects of these attitudes on the respondents’ banking behaviour. Although
there exist implied relationships between current public attitudes towards banks and
the public’s banking behaviour, it would be worthwhile exploring how the crisis has
influenced these links. Behavioural change could involve the extent of bank usage,
purchase of financial products, switching between institutions and customer
word-of-mouth, etc. As anger represented a powerful determinant of current
attitudes towards the banks it would be valuable to examine in greater depth how
various dimensions of anger with the banks translate into specific attitudes and
behaviours. Then it might be possible to establish how particular aspects of public
anger can be mitigated.
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Appendix: The questionnaire

1. The respondent
(a) Age and income category. Gender.
(b) The respondent was presented with the following statement and question:
“Some people have been affected more personally and severely by the financial crisis than
others, e.g. by losing their jobs, facing wage cuts, losing large amounts of interest on savings,
facing a higher chance of being made redundant, or not being able to get a loan or house
mortgage”.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 ¼ very badly affected; 1 ¼ hardly affected at all), how badly have you
personally been affected by the crisis?
IJBM 2. Attribution of blame for the crisis
Five point scale: 5 ¼ strongly agree; 1 ¼ strongly disagree (source: adapted from Leiser et al.,
30,2 2010).
The financial crisis was caused mainly by:
(a) poor government regulation of the overall financial system rather than by the banks
themselves;
(b) the general economic system rather than by the banks;
146 (c) the normal economic cycle rather than by the banks;
(d) bad luck and unpredictable events rather than by the behaviour of the banks;
(e) moral flaws among bankers such as greed and selfishness;
(f) wild speculation on the part of the banks;
(g) irresponsible and unprofessional behaviour on the part of the banks;
(h) bankers’ stupidity.

3. Knowledge of the crisis

Sources: Strutton and Lumpkin (1992) and Einwiller et al. (2010).
I obtained a large amount of knowledge about the financial crisis from:
(a) reports on TV, articles in the daily press or articles in magazines;
(b) conversations with other people;
(c) on-line sources;
(d) other sources.

4. Political orientation
(a) Politically, my views are inclined much more towards the right than the left.
(b) I am a politically conservative person.

5. Prior perceptions of the banking industry’s reputation

Sources: Bravo et al. (2009) and Sung and Kim (2010).
Before the financial crisis occurred I used to believe that the banking industry was:
(a) highly reputable;
(b) competent;
(c) managed by people of integrity;
(d) socially responsible;
(e) trustworthy;
(f) managed by people who were honest and reliable.

6. Feelings of anger at the banks’ behaviour

Source: Adapted from Izard (1977).
(a) The behaviour of the banks during the financial crisis did not make me feel angry (reverse
scored) (RS)).
(b) I was not at all irritated or annoyed by the way the banks behaved during the crisis (RS).
(c) When I think about the way the banks behaved during the crisis I feel like screaming at
someone or banging on an object.
(d) The banks’ behaviour during the crisis makes me so mad that I feel I am about to blow up.

7. Moralistic trust
Sources: Adapted from Obermiller and Spandenberg (1998) and Uslaner (2001).
(a) Generally speaking I believe that most people and organisations can be trusted.
(b) Generally speaking I believe that most people are honest.
(c) If I were to lose my wallet (containing my address) and were someone to find it I am pretty
sure that the finder would return it to me.
(d) Officials don’t care for the average person.
(e) To succeed in life it is necessary to know the right people, to have the right background and to Attitudes
have the right connections.
(f) There is plenty of opportunity for people to get ahead. towards UK
(g) Before accepting anything that businesses claim I first need to reflect carefully on the facts. banking
(h) I am naturally suspicious of anything that businesses say.
(i) In general, people who manage businesses are trustworthy.

8. Attitudes towards the banks 147

1. Trust/distrust in the sector.
Sources: adapted from Adams et al. (2010) and Sung and Kim (2010).
Compared to what I used to believe about the banking industry before the financial crisis took
place, I am now more inclined to believe the banking industry:
(a) is managed professionally;
(b) has strong leadership.
(c) is reliable;
(d) has good management systems;
(e) is competent;
(f) is happy to deceive the public;
(g) does not accept accountability for its actions;
(h) is respectful of laws;
(i) cares about acting ethically;
( j) is driven by greed;
(k) will always put its own interests above those of its customers.
2. General affect
Source: Hosmer (1995).
Compared to how I used to feel about the banking industry before the financial crisis I now feel:
(a) more positive about the banking industry than before;
(b) that I like the banking industry;
(c) that the banking industry is bad;
(d) less favourably disposed towards the banking industry than before.

Corresponding author
Rita Kottasz can be contacted at: r.kottasz@londonmet.ac.uk

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