Development practitioners are increasingly implementing projects that treat communities as development partners rather than as aid recipients. For example, in a typical Community-Driven Development (CDD) project, the communities control, up to a point, the resources as well as the design and the implementation of subprojects. For this approach to be successful and to provide durable benefits, communities need to sustain collective action, jointly managing project plans, budgets, implementation as well as operation and maintenance. The literature suggests that trust is an instrument factor in encouraging collective action. Indeed, most individuals will not contribute to collective action without sufficient trust that others will also contribute their fair share. Thus, it is important to understand what factors correlate with lower/higher levels of trust.
