engleski

Determinants of volunteers’ motives

Volunteering is recognized as socially and personally useful, but volunteers can have different reasons to engage in volunteering. Clary and Snyder (1999) listed six motives for volunteering: values, understanding, enhancement, career, social, and protective motive. The goal of this research was to examine (1) the frequency of each motive, (2) the difference in motive representation depending on the regularity of volunteering and the type of organization the participants volunteer in, and (3) whether the characteristics of volunteers or their volunteering would predict different types of motives. A sample of 147 young people (119 women) with volunteering experience, mostly students working in religious and civic organizations, filled in questionnaires on volunteer motives, self-esteem, and sociodemographic data. Results: The most frequent motives were the values and understanding, and the least frequent was the protective motive. A statistically significant difference was shown between motives by the type of organization and the regularity of volunteering. The social motive was more common among volunteers in religious than in civic organizations. Those who volunteer in civic organizations were more often motivated by career or understanding. Those who volunteer on a regular basis tended to be motivated by the value and understanding more often than those who volunteer occasionally. Self-esteem was found to be a significant positive predictor of the value motive, and religiosity of the social motive. A tendency to invest more effort in volunteer work predicted the value motive, and the type of organization was found to be a negative predictor of the career and understanding motive. Also, the regularity of volunteering was a positive predictor of the understanding motive. These findings allow a better understanding of the characteristics of volunteering and could improve the ways to promote volunteering, educate volunteers, and assign them the right volunteer tasks.

volunteering, motives for volunteering, volunteers’ characteristics, volunteering characteristics, youth

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