Spontaneous Volunteers Research Articles

Retraction notice to “Task recommendations for self-assigning spontaneous volunteers” [Comput. Ind. Eng. 163 (2022) 107798

Retraction notice to “Task recommendations for self-assigning spontaneous volunteers” [Comput. Ind. Eng. 163 (2022) 107798

Modeling Spontaneous Volunteers in Cross-Border Crisis Scenarios

Abstract The rise of social media has led to a new degree of spontaneous volunteering in the aftermath of disasters, even in border areas. However, spontaneous volunteering across national borders creates further obstacles that need to be addressed and prepared for. This paper introduces an agent-based simulation to examine coordination procedures of spontaneous volunteers in crisis scenarios, particularly the specifics of travel restrictions imposed after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, research is conducted on the effects of insufficient or delayed coordination of the population’s offer of voluntary help, which reduces the motivation of volunteers and leads to missed request for help.8. The results show that coordination of spontaneous volunteers is a key factor for helping the affected population, especially in a pandemic, where the possibilities to help are limited. These results are discussed with regard to costs that need to be considered in order to establish coordination, as well as health issues and motivation of spontaneous volunteers in different coordination scenarios.

Sustaining spontaneous volunteer groups following their response to a disaster

PurposeThis research explores the drivers that determine the ability of spontaneous volunteer groups (SVGs) to sustain their operations. That sustainability aims to support those affected in the community beyond the response phases of a disaster and into the recovery and mitigation phases to build resilience to the next disaster.Design/methodology/approachTo investigate the sustainability of spontaneous volunteering that takes place in the aftermath of a disaster, we conducted qualitative interviews in three English locations where groups of spontaneous volunteers emerged following major floods. We analysed our qualitative data using thematic analysis.FindingsOur findings theorise the drivers of SVG sustainability and present these in four themes: (1) assessment of ongoing needs; (2) organisation of resources to address that need; (3) leadership and followership creating a weight of operational capability and (4) influence of political will. Through exploring these drivers, we uncover key factors to developing a sustainable SVG system including trusted leadership and social capital.Research limitations/implicationsWe show how the four drivers interact to support the continuity of SVGs and sustain their operations. This has implications for how leaders of SVGs create a volunteering environment that encourages ongoing involvement and has implications for officials to view SVGs as a support rather than a risk.Originality/valueThe novelty of our paper is in rejecting the argument of the temporal limit of SVGs to the response phase by theorising the drivers that make their operations sustainable for recovery and resilience building to mitigate the next disaster. This includes our examination of the interplay between those drivers.

Improving emergency and disaster response management through bidirectional communication between citizens and decision-makers – A field test on the coordination of spontaneous volunteers

Cooperation between different stakeholders plays an important role in managing crises and disasters. The software tools used must also support cooperation and the mutual exchange of information. The bidirectional exchange of information between the population and official agencies poses a particular challenge. In this paper, we present a software demonstrator for the coordination of spontaneous volunteers and its evaluation as part of an overarching research project to gain design knowledge for the development of interconnected systems in disaster management. We describe how the system demonstrator was instantiated on the basis of our existing design knowledge from technical requirements and reference architecture and show the respective interfaces for the stakeholders involved. As the main contribution of the paper, we describe the implementation of a field test to evaluate the demonstrator and present the results in terms of usability and perceived usefulness, which we obtained using a methodologically sound questionnaire.

Proposing a model for integrating spontaneous volunteers in emergency response in Denmark

Spontaneous volunteerism is a controversial topic in emergency response. Even though professionals and spontaneous volunteers in emergency response have the common aim of aiding those in need, the Danish authorities' framework for involving spontaneous volunteers is very limited. This paper discusses how spontaneous volunteers’ contributions can be integrated into professional emergency response in Denmark, while ensuring professional guidance of this contribution. This paper applies a literature and document study, covering state-of-the-art research on the topic of professional interaction with spontaneous volunteers and the Danish emergency response system, including the role of volunteers, respectively. It is found that involvement of spontaneous volunteers is a professional responsibility, that involvement should be through established or expanding emergency response organisations and focus on tasks related to the common aim of aiding those in need. It is concluded that this can be achieved by applying one-point-of-contact for spontaneous volunteers (rather than division by sectoral responsibility), a registration system enabling access to relevant tasks for spontaneous volunteers, the deployment of a spontaneous volunteer facilitator going into dialogue with spontaneous volunteers to enrol them in professional response, and a humane rejection when it is necessary to reject the offer of help from spontaneous volunteers.

Whose disaster? Disaster response as a conflicted field between cooperation and competition

Disasters reveal solidarity as well as contestation in many different aspects. This article deals with the increasing significance of spontaneous volunteers (here non-official responders to disasters) and the resulting impacts on the established population protection system in Germany. Considering respective changes and differences, it explores subliminal and manifested conflicts among official and non-official responders. Based on a survey among disaster officials (n = 1957), qualitative interviews (n = 12) and workshop outcomes, the findings reveal competing opportunities to participate in disaster response, clashes of logics of disaster response practice, challenges in task distribution, and points of friction due to shared public recognition. This article uses a Bourdieusian lens to analyze these obstacles to cooperation against the background of habitus-related role expectations, shifting dispositions, newly emerging demands for official disaster response, and altered volunteering reward patterns and attractiveness. It concludes with a discussion on underlying hurdles for cooperation among different disaster responders, changing social norms as the significance of non-official volunteers increases, cascading effects of different conflict lines, and effects of societal dynamics on disaster response systems.

Evaluating the impact of citizen collaboration with government agencies in disaster response operations: An agent-based simulation study

In emergencies, the involvement of informal volunteers as first responders plays a crucial role in alerting professionals and carrying out initial rescue efforts due to their proximity to incidents. The lack of proper training among many of these informal volunteers, however, raises concerns about their potential to inadvertently cause harm. Within the disaster response community, there is a growing need to understand the collaboration dynamics between spontaneous volunteers and government officials in disaster response planning. This paper quantitatively evaluates the value of collaboration between formal government agencies and informal citizen volunteers in disaster response operations. It investigates the potential for informal volunteers' involvement to enhance the effectiveness of disaster response under different collaboration strategies. The study aims to identify best practices for coordinating officials and citizens, develop novel collaborative response models, and assess those models’ performance in emergencies. To achieve this goal, agent-based simulation is employed to model alternative collaboration strategies between the government and informal volunteers across various disaster scenarios. The simulation incorporates verified request locations from emergency phone calls and on-the-ground assessment data, as well as unverified request locations obtained from social media platforms. The objective of this study is to examine various collaboration strategies and assess their impact on the response rates of disaster victims, considering different citizen-related, responder-related, and logistics-related disaster factors. This research provides insights into the current state of emergency management activities and proposes improvements to enhance the effectiveness of disaster response efforts.

Achieving Organizationality in Large-Scale Crises: A Comparative Case Study on the Communicative Constitution of Spontaneous Volunteer Collectives

Many large-scale crises require rapid responses from spontaneous volunteers (SVs). The more effective the way in which volunteers develop organizationality, the better they are able to coordinate individual activities, and the better they can cope with demands imposed by a disaster. However, we currently know too little about how SV collectives emerge and develop organizationality in the context of crises. We, therefore, explore organizationality’s emerging phases and determinants by grounding our study on the “communication constitutes organizations” research stream, that is, the four flows (4 F) model. In our qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews, as well as (social) media data from five large-scale crises in Germany, we identify the role of space, symbols, and support (3 S), and their effects as enablers of legitimacy and collective identity. By complementing the 4 F model, we contribute to “communication constitutes organizations” research and draw implications for managing loose SV collectives in practice.

Volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic: leadership matters – the case of scrubs

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested every area of daily life for the world’s population. This narrative study will be of value and interest to an emerging body of empirical evidence on the leadership of spontaneous volunteer activity during a global pandemic. Spontaneous volunteers told their stories, and these narratives form the focus of this research, exploring leadership of this group. Empirical evidence confirmed that leadership was effective in producing successful results, and resulted from a knowledge of the community, leader skill, authentic behaviours and an adaptive style; however, no one style of leadership was identified. There is a need for further research into this area of leadership, to understand how the leadership of spontaneous volunteers can be effective for the community, in crises and disaster responses.

Managing spontaneous volunteers during emergency response: The role of trust

Spontaneous volunteers often serve as a critical resource during disaster and emergency response, but they may also cause confusion, accidents and further escalation of an emergency situation. In order to contribute towards a deeper understanding of managerial decision-making and conditions limiting and enabling efficient and effective emergency response, this article examines the role of trust in managing spontaneous volunteers during emergency response. Building on theories of trust, trust-based management and cross-sector collaboration, it argues that incident commanders engage in trust evaluations when determining whether and how to involve citizens as co-responders. Reporting on an empirical study of local emergency management in Norway and Denmark, it shows how trust plays a role in five conceptually distinct strategies for managing unaffiliated citizens: dismissing, directing, cooperating, coordinating, and collaborating. The study findings suggest that intermediary organizations such as the Red Cross provide critical infrastructures of trust that enable incident commanders to progress from costly and low-value forms of control-based management to more efficient and effective forms of trust-based management.

Collective Rescue: Why the Government Can Collaborate with the Public during Extreme Precipitation

Extreme precipitation poses significant threats to economic development and social security. In order to tackle this formidable issue, the Chinese government has invested substantial investments to promote the “sponge city” project. However, extreme precipitation in Zhengzhou on 21 July 2021 proved that this effort fell far short of its goal, highlighting the difficulty in relying solely on the government to respond to severe disasters. Collaborations between the public and the government have become essential for effectively managing extreme precipitation risk. However, bridging the gap between the public and the government remains a challenging task in China. Interestingly, an Online Collaborative Document (OCD) emerged without any financial investment from the government yet went on to save countless lives. The key lies in that the OCD greatly promoted the cooperation between spontaneous volunteering and official response. This study aims to explain how an OCD encourages effective collaboration between spontaneous volunteering and official responses in tackling extreme precipitation risk. This study employs the method of the case study about the extreme precipitation and analyzes the directed survey on the spontaneous volunteers, grassroots government officials, and affected individuals who used the OCD. Additionally, a variety of data collection techniques, including focus groups and one-on-one interviews, are used to examine the relevant information. This study explores how the OCD eliminated the paradox of collaboration between spontaneous volunteering and the official response thereby fostering coordination between them.

Spontaneous volunteers and the flood disaster 2021 in Germany: Development of social innovations in flood risk management

AbstractIn the response of the flood disaster in Germany 2021 a vast number of spontaneous volunteers (SVs) participated. They organized coordinating services, developed emergent forms of SVs and thus hold the potential to improve existing flood managing capacities. This raises the need for in‐depth knowledge about SVs and organization, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), social and individual aspects. This article analyzed results of an online survey (n = 2636) with the aim to discuss challenges and potentials to develop SVs as social innovations in flood risk management. As a result, SVs are strong value‐based motivated, can be psychologically stressed and travel long distances, especially when they got aware of helping possibilities via social media. Disaster relief organizations rarely cooperate with or integrate SVs, but when they collaborate, SVs' satisfaction with authorities increases significantly. Based on the results, this article derives preplanning of useful concepts consider safety aspects, ICT utilization, foster mutual respect between SVs and authorities and supporting sense of community as key results for development of social innovations. Especially in light of pandemics, social crisis like refugee movements, and climate change‐related disasters, the requirement rises for engaging SVs.

Matter of trust: How to include digital volunteers in crisis management

AbstractDigital volunteers are becoming more visible actors in crises. By collecting data, correcting misinformation, and organizing help, they are often a much‐needed resource in crisis management. Despite this, authorities generally see spontaneous volunteers as a risk and a burden, thereby creating a paradox identified by Harris and colleagues. To extend the paradox to digital volunteers, this study aims to understand how Finnish emergency response organizations perceive spontaneous digital volunteers and how these could become a resource in crisis management. Eight informants representing six authorities/non‐governmental organizations were interviewed in March 2019. The results show that authorities see potential in digital volunteers but only for strictly limited tasks as problems with trust and volunteers' lack of knowledge and training stand in the way of cooperation, thus confirming the paradox. The main contribution of this study is to show how the involvement/exclusion paradox exists in the relationship and may create barriers between authorities and digital volunteers.

Agent-Based Simulation of Spontaneous Volunteer Convergence to Improve Disaster Planning

The involvement of spontaneous volunteers (SVs) in disaster response represents a significant resource. However, existing emergency management plans often fail to take spontaneous volunteers into account due to negative perceptions and uncertainty about SV convergence. We developed an agent-based simulation model of spontaneous volunteer convergence to aid the disaster response planning process. The model considers a heterogeneous population of agents, each with unique attributes such as motivation, opinion, and site choice behavior. Model development was informed by the literature as well as interviews with volunteers and volunteer managers, participant observations, and discussions with practitioners. To illustrate the practical value of the model, we present a case study that addressed research questions related to volunteer reception centers and volunteer assignment policies. This transdisciplinary study bridges the gap between operations research and management science and social science, and provides a new decision aid to help improve the integration of spontaneous volunteers in disaster management plans.

Volunteers during a crisis in Israel: a case study of spontaneous self-organized volunteer activity

In Israel, a large number and a wide range of non-governmental volunteering organizations exist in various fields. At the same time, due to the multiplicity of security incidents and other national crises, there are also numerous independent volunteer initiatives emerging within specific communities, small communities, or cities. Private initiatives that started as small volunteer aid have grown mainly thanks to the technological possibilities that enable the transfer of information about a crisis and the needs associated with it. This study examines the volunteers’ perception of effectiveness in a self-organized spontaneous setting, and their sense of belonging to the community and the State of Israel. This article presents a case study of unorganized, spontaneous volunteer activity in Israel in situations of stress and crisis. The study is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with those who engaged in spontaneous self-organized volunteer activity. The study findings show that mobilizing volunteers through WhatsApp messages strengthened the sense of effectiveness in performing the task, fostered the volunteers’ sense of belonging to their community, and contributed to the rapid achievement of the task. The study also highlights the socio-moral dimensions that intensify in such a volunteering process and the individual’s feelings about his place in society and his observation of society’s behaviour in general.

Volunteering in the front line of the Ukrainian refugee crisis: A brief report from Poland.

This study aims to analyse the experiences and motivations of volunteers who supported Ukrainian refugees who fled to Poland. Our study was conducted among 196 volunteers in Poznan, Poland who answered questions regarding their experiences with voluntary service during the current refugee crisis and the reasons they became involved in volunteer efforts. We found that although the Polish state had no prior experience in welcoming refugees on a mass scale, the Russo-Ukrainian War has resulted in the emergence of “spontaneous volunteers” who have offered their help and assistance to the flood of refugees sweeping in from its eastern neighbor. We also found that because many Polish citizens believe that helping those in need should not rest solely on the government there are two main motivations to volunteer: a general willingness to help and the willingness to volunteer on behalf of Ukrainian refugees. Finally, while this study highlights that in times of crisis, most people are primarily motivated by humanistic and democratic values, including altruism and public service, emotions also play an important role in influencing people's decision to engage in voluntary service.

Pandemic relief volunteers-increasing resilience for disasters

HintergrundDie Coronapandemie fordert von unserem Gesundheitssystem neue Lösungen, um in kurzer Zeit die Behandlungskapazitäten belastbar zu erweitern. Als letzte Erweiterungsstufe dient der Katastrophenschutz, dessen Durchhaltefähigkeit auch durch freiwillige Personen verbessert werden kann. Diese Spontanhelfer benötigen jedoch eine Ausbildung, um in die Hilfeleistungsstrukturen eingebunden zu werden.MethodeEin Expertengremium mit langjähriger Erfahrung in der Entwicklung und Durchführung von Ausbildungen entwickelte in einem stufenweisen Prozess ein Curriculum zur Ausbildung des Pandemienotfallhelfers (PNH).ErgebnisseDer PNH soll die vollausgebildeten Helfer während des Transports und der Versorgung in einem Behelfskrankenhaus unterstützen. Das Curriculum zur Ausbildung zum PNH umfasst 16 Unterrichtseinheiten zu je 45 min zu den Themen Einsatz, Eigen- und Fremdschutz sowie unmittelbare Patientenversorgung. Im Fokus stehen praktische Fertigkeiten, für die die Teilnehmer die Durchführungsverantwortung übernehmen können.SchlussfolgerungMit dem Konzept des PNH steht erstmalig eine strukturierte Vorbereitung und Eingliederung von Spontanhelfern im deutschen Katastrophenschutz zu Verfügung. Er ist kein Ersatz für vollausgebildete haupt- und ehrenamtliche Kräfte, sondern kann eine sinnvolle Unterstützung darstellen.

The Work and Significance of Spontaneous Volunteers: A Labour Theory Analysis of the Disaster Volunteers Bus Programme following Typhoon Hagibis

The Work and Significance of Spontaneous Volunteers: A Labour Theory Analysis of the Disaster Volunteers Bus Programme following Typhoon Hagibis

RETRACTED: Task recommendations for self-assigning spontaneous volunteers

Spontaneous volunteers are a critical and often overlooked resource during disaster response. Frameworks that do consider spontaneous volunteers often rely on the use of a central controller to assign them to tasks, which is not always feasible due to privacy and legal liabilities. We investigate a new paradigm in which volunteers self-assign to tasks from an ordered list of recommendations. We present the problem of generating task recommendations as the Online Task Recommendation problem. Subsequently, we present the Maximal Ordered Multiple Matching problem, an integer optimization approach to construct task recommendations for volunteers by matching tasks and volunteers based on the expected volunteer utility from completing each task and the societal value of completing each task. We prove the presented matching model is polynomially solvable. We present a method to calculate improved objective coefficients by iteratively solving the proposed integer program and computing the likelihood that volunteers would select each recommended task. We demonstrate the benefit of the proposed methods with both real-world and synthetic case studies with spatially distributed tasks using Monte Carlo simulations. We find that recommendations generated by the proposed models guide the completion of the most critical tasks by reducing task over-service redundant volunteer responses often associated with spontaneous volunteers while recommending tasks that are preferred by the volunteers.

Emergency food supplies and food security in Wuhan and Nanjing, China, during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from a field survey.

MotivationDetailed empirical work on the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on food security is scant. Local management of food security has received little attention.PurposeThis article describes emergency food policies in Wuhan and Nanjing, China during lockdown in 2020 and their implications for household food security in the two cities.Methods and approachPolicy documents and background data describe the emergency measures. Online surveys of residents of two Chinese cities were used to gauge household food security.FindingsDespite the determined efforts of provincial and city governments to ensure that food reached people who were locked down in Wuhan, or subject to restrictions on movement in Nanjing, households experienced some decline in food security. Most households found they could not access their preferred foods. But a minority of households did not get enough to eat.Government had contingency plans for the pandemic that ensured that most people had sufficient, if not preferred, food. But not all households were fully covered.Policy implicationsA more resilient system of food distribution is needed, including a relatively closed and independent home delivery system. Grassroots organizations such as residential community committees, property management organizations, and spontaneous volunteer groups need to be brought into the management of emergency food provision.