Trust is a precondition for any form of cooperative collective action. Previous literature has shown that individual trust and welfare state institutions tend to reinforce each other. However, more recent work, aiming at disentangling the causal relationship between the two has shown that the association is more complex and that results are more mixed than theoretically expected. Trust might have different effects on one's social policy preferences depending on many environmental factors. First, the capacity of the state to effectively provide social protection in an optimal way, and second, the available alternative, namely, the availability of strong informal solidarity networks. I argue that while individuals who believe others to be trustworthy will support a cooperative effort to build solidarity networks and insure together each citizen from social risks, their likelihood to support a state-led effort to provide social insurance will depend on the quality of government institution and the strength of civil society. I test this argument leveraging survey data from the European Social Survey in combination with administrative and regional data, as well as country specific survey and administrative data. I test my expectations, providing evidence that the effect of trust on social policy preferences can only be theorised and investigated into context.