Unselfish? Understanding the Role of Altruism, Empathy, and Beliefs in Volunteering Commitment

Motivations, Expectations and Experiences in Being a Mental Health Helplines Volunteer

“…This was not perceived to be the same for the students volunteering within the organisation in the current study as the perceived motivation among university students for volunteering was extrinsic in nature as it appeared to longer-term volunteers that the students only wished to gain relevant skills from the new training programme and participate in the minimum number of hours required for their psychology course curriculum. Although youths start and continue volunteering for a variety of reasons that span intrinsic and extrinsic reasons; youths, in general, do want to make a difference but also wish to attain self-enhancement, skills and experience for their future careers [ 37 , 47 , 48 ]. However, when volunteering is a compulsory obligation, the lack of choice has been found to reduce the young person’s sense of agency and does not facilitate positive community attitudes or social behaviours [ 49 ].…”

“…Additionally, compulsory volunteering may not incentivize learning or mastery of skills [ 50 ]. While this is not surprising, commitment to volunteering is a complex process and assessing initial motivations is also necessary alongside consideration of factors for retention of an individual [ 37 ].…”

“…Finkelstein was able to link various facets of functional analysis, role identity and motivational orientation and summarised a construct of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations whereby the former may represent internal motives or the activity itself (e.g., expression of altruistic values or skills/self-esteem/social connection enhancement) while the latter may be related to outcomes (e.g., career development) [ 35 ]. Further, volunteer motivations do not remain static and can potentially change over time [ 36 , 37 ].…”

Congruence Matters: Volunteer Motivation, Value Internalization, and Retention

“…First, despite that early studies suggest a unidimensional construct of volunteer motivation (e.g., Cnaan and Goldberg-Glen 1991), extensive research has identified the critical role different motivations of volunteering play in shaping individuals' perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward volunteer work (Cialdini et al 1987;Mesch et al 1998;Phillips and Phillips 2011;Smith 1981;Stukas et al 2016). For instance, other-oriented, altruistic motives of volunteering are positively related to satisfaction and intentions to continue (Stukas et al 2016), participation in corporate volunteering (Sekar and Dyaram 2017), and commitment (Veludo- de-Oliveira et al 2015), while selforiented motives are negatively related to such concepts. Second, another stream of research has taken a functionalist perspective in exploring the role of volunteer motivation, suggesting that different motives may appeal to different individuals through different functional mechanisms such as value, understanding, social, career, protective, and enhancement (Clary et al 1998;Snyder et al 2000).…”

Wilderness State Park Volunteers

“…Common modifications to the VFI include the addition of extrinsic factors such as volunteer training or recognition (Jacobson et al, 2012, p. 56), the importance of civic engagement (Lu & Schuett, 2014, p. 75), and the importance of being in or connecting to nature (Guiney & Oberhauser, 2009). Other psychology-based studies have found altruism to be of importance in motivating volunteers to give their time and expertise as well as to remain in a volunteer program (Kahana, Bhatta, & Kahana, 2013;Veludo-de-Oliveira, 2015).…”