Knowledge Mapping of Volunteer Motivation: A Bibliometric Analysis and Cross-Cultural Comparative Study

Abstract

Volunteers play an indispensable role in several major events and activities. The purpose of this study is to review studies on volunteer motivation from 2000 to 2021 and to discover the development trends in this field. The Web of Science Core Collection is the main literature data resource, from which 162 papers on volunteer motivation published in the SSCI were selected. Using two visualization analysis tools, CiteSpace and VOSviewer, this study conducts bibliometric analysis and systematic review from multiple dimensions, identifying the authors, countries, institutions, and journals with high productivity in this field. Additionally, we explored highly cited papers, authors, and journals in this field. This study aims to find the research hotspots and theoretical basis through co-occurrence analysis and cluster analysis of keywords and explore the evolution through the time zone map drawn with CiteSpace. Moreover, we focus on the influence of Chinese and Western cultures (represented by China and the United States) on volunteer motivation. It was found that Chinese volunteers were more affected by collectivism, whereas American volunteers were more affected by individualism. The conclusion of this study constructs a clear framework for research on volunteer motivation, which provides researchers with a deeper and thorough understanding of the connotation of volunteer motivation, providing guidance and support for future research in this field.

Health workers’ capability, opportunity, motivation, and behavior to prevent and control COVID-19 in a high-risk district in Thailand

“…This later point was buttressed by Afari-Asiedu et al [37] result where the volunteers deemed it as a pleasure to be chosen by community leaders and given the duty of assisting healthcare provision in the community. The feeling of achievement is an important factor in the promotion of volunteer work and, moreover, an important part of the motivation of volunteer works [17]. Meanwhile, many of the VHVs have low motivation about the believe that wearing a mask, washing of hands for at least 20 seconds, and maintaining a distance of 2 meters between people can prevent/reduce COVID-19 infection, and this may be due to the no or limited training received by this set of VHVs.…”

“…Health workers who provide treatment for COVID-19 patients have been reported to have greater rates of sadness, anxiety, sleeplessness, distress and mental pressure compared to other healthcare professionals, due to COVID-19's highly infectious nature and lack of specific vaccine for treatment [14,15,16]. Chen et al [17] also opined that doctors, nurses and other health workers are dealing with mental health issues due to this pandemic. With the above mentioned challenges, there is a need for the implementation of healthy behavioural theory among health workers to successfully prevent the spread of the disease.…”

Life Satisfaction and Self-Esteem in Older Adults Engaging in Formal Volunteering: A Cross-Sectional Study in Taiwan

“…Thus, the Eastern conceptualization of happiness aligns more with eudaimonic motive-based happiness [ 63 ]. The emphasis on the contribution to society or the community in Chinese culture was also supported by a bibliometric study of 162 publications from 2000 to 2021 comparing volunteer motivation between Chinese and American volunteers [ 64 ]. Therefore, future research should explore strategies to promote the eudaimonic motives of formal volunteers to achieve an optimal level of life satisfaction.…”

“…Nevertheless, results from a longitudinal study suggested that self-esteem tended to be an antecedent rather than a consequence of social support in adults [ 14 ]. Another study reported that self-esteem and behavioral activation, both independent and serially, mediated the positive association between cheerfulness and life satisfaction [ 64 ]. Hence, these studies suggested that individuals with higher levels of self-esteem tended to predict greater life satisfaction.…”

Development and status of moral education research: Visual analysis based on knowledge graph

“…Therefore, to ensure that the literature included in the analysis was closely related to the relevant topics, software was required to remove and manually screen the literature included in the analysis after the initial literature search. Doing so prevents the analytical results from suffering due to data quality problems (Chen et al, 2022 ).…”