The impact of job design on event volunteers' future engagement: insights from the European Football Championship 2008

Abstract

Large sport events increasingly rely on volunteers. However, little is known about the impact these events have on volunteers' future engagement. This study, carried out at the European Football Championship 2008, examines how job characteristics, organizational features, and appreciation affect volunteers' satisfaction and intention to continue their engagement at events and for organizations. Distinguishing between genuine episodic volunteers, current long-term volunteers, and former long-term volunteers, five possible effects on volunteers' intention are proposed: event retention, recruiting, confirmation, comeback, and migration. While organizational features and appreciation primarily affected satisfaction, it was found that specific job characteristics can foster or diminish these five effects. For sport event managers, these findings suggest that in order to create a sustainable event volunteer workforce designing and assigning volunteer jobs is as crucial as attracting volunteers in the first place. Sending organizations, in turn, should pay more attention to which jobs their volunteers are assigned.