This study examines the relationship between public service motivation and antecedents believed to be important determinants of moral commitment. Research conducted during the past decade indicates that public service motivation is a valid construct that is useful for predicting outcomes that are important to public organizations and to society. The sample for the empirical study consists of winners of the Daily Point of Light Award and the President’s Community Volunteer Award. Antecedents studied are volunteer experience, religious activity, and parental socialization. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are used to identify key determinants of public sector motivation. Religious activity is positively related to formal and informal volunteering. Interviews strongly support the quantitative findings, especially the importance of religion, but also highlight the role of life‐changing events.

This research note reports a confirmatory factor analysis for three of Perry's (1996) public service motivation (PSM) subdimensions: self-sacrifice, commitment to public interest, and compassion. A mail survey of national award-winning volunteers constitutes the sample. Results indicate strong support for Perry's instrument, most noticeably better results for self-sacrifice than those found in Perry's original exploratory work. Implications and recommendations for PSM instrument development are discussed.

Functional theory suggests that people choose activities based on their perception of how well the work matches their personal motives.This process implies that worker motivations vary by activity even when controlling for typical motivational antecedents. Although this perspective is common in the volunteering literature, the public service motivation (PSM) literature has not formally considered functional theory hypotheses.Yet PSM theory asserts a relationship not to government work itself, but to activities related to public service such as volunteering.This study evaluates functional theory in regard to PSM based on using a survey of recipients of the Daily Point of Light Award (DPOL) and the President’s Community Volunteer Award (PCV). After controlling for common PSM antecedents such as gender, level of education, religious participation, and age, PSM and its subdimensions exhibit some variance across volunteering domains (viz., religious, educational/school, human services, and other), though most differences involve religious organizations.

Managing volunteers is a difficult undertaking. This study draws on human resource (HR) management theory and literature to investigate the effect of two HR practices—training and recognition—on volunteer turnover. We use longitudinal administrative data collected by an Indiana nonprofit organization, which contains individual volunteer characteristics, organizational HR practices, and information on actual turnover behavior. We found that recognizing volunteer contributions with awards predicted volunteer retention in the following year. Training did not have a direct effect on volunteer turnover, but interacted with gender; men who received training were more likely to stay than women. The study contributes to the literature on HR management in the volunteer context, adds to the emerging literature on awards as incentives for volunteers, and addresses the common method bias by using longitudinal data.