Volunteer labor sorting across industries

Abstract

Volunteer labor is generally analyzed as a homogeneous activity, implying that the marginal effects of tax changes and demographic shifts are equal across industries and forms of volunteering. Here the homogeneity assumption is tested by estimating and comparing volunteer labor supply functions in three sectors that rely on volunteer labor-health, education, and religious organizations. Differences in the marginal volunteer labor supply effects are associated with personal demographics, household composition, and tax status. These differences are significant statistically as well as for their policy implications. The effects on volunteering to each sector are predicted for changes in the age, education, and marital status distributions of the population, as well as for changes in income tax rates, itemization status, and income. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Time vs. money — The supply of voluntary labor and charitable donations across Europe

“…Although the consumption model predicts volunteering to increase with total income, this does not hold true in case of labor supply to organizations associated with leisure activities and religious organizations, which appears to be uncorrelated with income. This result is partly consistent with Segal and Weisbrod (2002), who find that increased household income increases the amount of volunteer time supplied to health organizations, but has no effect on volunteering for religious organizations.…”

“…13 Analyzing philanthropic behavior on a disaggregated level further reveals large differences in the determinants of time and money donations -both across different types of voluntary organizations and across different welfare regimes. This suggests that volunteering is not a "homogeneous commodity" (Segal and Weisbrod, 2002), but rather a heterogeneous good that offers utility in multiple dimensions that vary across voluntary organizations and countries.…”

A Cross-Cultural Examination of Student Volunteering: Is It All About Résumé Building?

“…There is substantial theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that suggests that many people engage in volunteering activities to improve their employment opportunities either as direct investment in human capital (e.g., Menchik & Weisbrod, 1987;Day & Devlin, 1998;Carlin, 2001;Segal & Weisbrod, 2002;Gunderson & Gomez, 2003), increasing their social contacts which may be used as a means to get better jobs (Wuthnow, 1998), or the signaling value of volunteering (Ellingsen and Johannesson , 2003;Katz & Rosenberg, 2005;Ziemek, 2006). In the latter literature, volunteering serves as a signaling device through which the volunteer signals to the (potential) employer or admission officer that he or she is a 'good' type, who is willing to incur net-costs of their volunteering activities that serve the public good.…”

The Demand for Volunteer Labor: A Study of Hospital Volunteers

“…First is a consumption model in which volunteering is a utility-yielding activity-the individual receives satisfaction from the very act of volunteering. This individual maximizes utility subject to a time and budget constraint (Andreoni, 1990;Menchik&Weisbrod, 1987;Prouteau&Wolff, 2004;Segal & Weisbrod, 2002). Second is an investment model in which volunteering is undertaken by an individual to enhance future income potential.…”

“…Due to differing expectations and objectives as well as histories, geography, and culture, different organizations attract and utilize different types of volunteer labor. For example, the ownership of the organization, or the subsector of the economy in which the organization is located, can lead to a sorting out of volunteer labor (Segal & Weisbrod, 2002). To minimize these differences, we focus on volunteer labor in a relatively homogeneous sector, namely, publicly subsidized nonprofit hospitals in the Toronto area, which face similar political and cultural environments.…”