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A New Yorker cartoon shows a man at a desk, holding a knife, and saying into the phone, “Trust me, Stan. I’ve got your back.”

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In a world of competitive self-interest, trust can be an asset when justified, and a liability when not — but in any case it can be valuable to a company, a politician, even a hockey league. The problem is that, like many emotions, trust is all but invisible to the tools of market research, and strategies to promote it are based on little more than anecdote. In its Community and Brand Trust Survey, B.C.’s Concerto Marketing Group shows a difference in the trust Torontonians and Vancouverites have for the institutions around them, from banks to mayors.

“Right off the bat we see that people in Toronto, pretty much across the board, are more trusting than people in Vancouver,” said Rob Dawson of Concerto. He said this reflects an independent, populist, Western mindset. “Our model shows that trust isn’t formed just one way, it’s formed through a variety of factors coming together, and if something happens to break that trust or shift it, it does take time to build it back up again.”