Volunteering as a Means to an Equal End? The Impact of a Social Justice Function on Intention to Volunteer

Abstract

In the present study, we combined components of the theory of planned behavior and the functional approach to predict the social sector volunteering intention of nonvolunteers (N = 513). Moreover, we added a new other-oriented "social justice function" to the Volunteer Functions Inventory of Clary and colleagues (1998), which contains mainly self-oriented functions. We distinguished the social justice function from the other five measured volunteer functions in confirmatory factor analysis, and showed its incremental validity in predicting intention to volunteer beyond established constructs such as self-efficacy, subjective norm, and the five volunteer functions. This study suggests that emphasizing potential social justice improvements by means of volunteering may attract new volunteers.

Beyond Skills and Structure: Justice Dispositions as Antecedents of Young Citizens' Volunteering and Political Participation

“…Furthermore, instead of solely looking for further distal socio‐demographic or personality predictors, it seems promising to us to build on previous work by Moschner () and to scrutinise mediating mechanisms between justice beliefs and attitudes and civic engagement by including actual perceptions of injustice and emotional reactions, as well as control‐related and norm‐related attitudes with regard to specific forms of volunteering, as the theory of planned behaviour (Fishbein & Ajzen, ) suggests. A recent study by Jiranek, Kals, Humm, Strubel, and Wehner () represents a step in this direction. Moreover, future research might compare specific areas of volunteering, for example, involvements in churches and other religious contexts, in political parties or in organisations dedicated to charitable purposes.…”

Volunteering to Support Refugees: A Question of One’s Scope of Justice

“…27 It has been empirically shown that the justice motive is relevant for social volunteering. 28 This should also apply to social volunteering for aiding and integrating refugees: what judgments are made, and what categories of fairness are applied to the refugees?…”

Citizenship: A core motive for South African university student volunteers

“…Although citizenship may be perceived to be included in the value function, this function does not make clear provision for either social justice, social responsibility or citizenship motives. Recently researchers (Jiranek et al, 2013) have informally added social justice, 'the promotion of equality' (p. 521), to the VFI. Meanwhile, other scholars have also started to refer to social justice motives as a function of volunteering (Güntert et al, 2016).…”

“…These perceptions are linked to notions of promoting social justice and expressing active citizenship (Jiranek et al, 2013). The notion of using community engagement such as volunteerism to address inequalities is communicated through various outlets on multiple platforms (Bringle and Hatcher, 1999;Ostrander, 2004;Whitley and Yoder, 2015).…”