Volunteering: The Role of Individual-level Psychological Variables

Abstract

A broad range of activities are often included in volunteering. The motivations for volunteering are also many-faceted. Volunteers form most of the workforce in India's non-profit sector, which is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the world. However, volunteering in India has hardly received any scholarly attention. Applying our understanding based on findings on volunteering has been warned against since volunteering does not even mean the same thing for different people living in different cultures and countries. This study thus attempts to understand the kind of people who are drawn to volunteering. Specifically, the role of personality traits, values, and self-efficacy beliefs of those who volunteer are explored. Volunteering activities, it is argued, can be of two types — help volunteering, leading to altruism and helping, and involvement volunteering, requiring personal involvement in the community. It is argued that values and self-efficacy beliefs mediate the role of traits in volunteering. A survey was administered to 228 postgraduate students studying in a professional college. Standardized scales for measuring volunteering do not allow the distinction between help and involvement volunteering. Therefore a scale was designed to measure the extent of volunteering based on the context of the college from which the students were sampled. Personality traits, self-efficacy beliefs, and values were measured using standardized scales. Data was analysed using PLS-SEM. It was found that agreeableness and extraversion traits, universalism values, and social self-efficacy beliefs were positively correlated with help volunteering. Extraversion trait, stimulation value, and social self-efficacy beliefs were positively correlated with involvement volunteering. Universalism fully mediated the effect of agreeableness on help volunteering. No support was found for the mediation of self-efficacy beliefs on help or involvement volunteering. The study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between helping and involvement types of volunteering. The reasons and type of people who volunteer to help seem to be different from those who volunteer to get involved in the community or cause. Further investigation with larger and more diverse sample would help in contributing further to the understanding of volunteers and their motivations. The study has managerial implications mainly in terms of helping selection and retaining of volunteers for various types of activities and in promotion and branding of volunteering events and organizations. Communication for attracting volunteers that require help or involvement may be designed differently for helping kind of activities versus those that require involvement of people.