Volunteers' Religiosity and Intention to Stay: The Mediating Role of Motivation

Abstract

Non-profit scholars are progressively investigating volunteers’ attitudinal and motivational factors to better assess their intention to stay with the organization. However, little research has specifically addressed volunteers’ religiosity and attitude towards the organization, and their links to volunteer motivation and intention to stay with it, in the context of non-profit organizations. Building on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of religiosity as an antecedent of volunteers’ intention to stay with the organization, and the mediating role of both volunteers’ motivation and attitude towards the organization in such a relationship. Bootstrapped multiple mediation analysis is used to test the proposed hypotheses on a sample of 379 individuals who act as volunteers for non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Italy. The results support the role of religiosity as a significant predictor of volunteer intentions, and the mediating role of motivation and attitude on this relationship. Particularly, volunteers who are driven by their religious values are likely to develop a stronger motivation to volunteering and a positive attitude towards NPOs activities and consequently a stronger willingness to stay with the organization. Hence, this study contributes to the literature on NPOs by stressing the role of antecedents and underlying mechanisms affecting volunteers’ motivation and, in turn, their intention to stay with the organization.