Compulsory volunteers' nostalgia and its relationships with positive memories, age, past experiences, and volunteer intention.

Abstract

While nostalgia has been explored in various contexts, no research has so far investigated how individuals’ nostalgia can be generated by volunteer experiences in compulsory settings and how nostalgic feelings extend their future behavior. To fill this research gap, this study explored how nostalgia regarding compulsory volunteering is related to positive memories, age, and past experiences and how such nostalgia translates to volunteer intention. A total of 605 responses were collected from university students who had completed compulsory volunteering at sporting events and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results showed that positive memories contributed to all five factors of volunteer nostalgia, while past experiences only predicted volunteer environment, volunteer socialization, and volunteer personal identity. Age was not a significant antecedent to any of the volunteer nostalgia factors. Nostalgia regarding volunteer experience and volunteer personal identity mediated the relationship between positive memories and volunteer intention. This study confirmed previous claims concerning the relationships among nostalgia, positive memories, age, and past experiences in the context of compulsory volunteering. Specifically, individuals can develop nostalgia for coerced experiences if they have fond memories of them. Also, past experiences are more essential to nostalgia than age but not as much as positive memories, and nostalgia can turn compulsory volunteers into continued volunteers.