Volunteerism Research

Subjective Dispositions

Subjective disposition is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of concepts (such as personality traits, motives, attitudes, norms, and values) that have one thing in common: they all refer to the way people interpret themselves and the world around them—hence the term “subjective.” They are called dispositions because they indicate a level of “readiness” to act in a certain way in response to appropriate stimuli.

In the past, a number of studies have linked personality traits to volunteerism. This continues to be a fruitful line of investigation. The trait most often associated with doing volunteer work is extraversion, followed by agreeableness (Bekkers, 2005; Omoto, Snyder, & Hackett, 2010, p. 1719). It is not yet clear exactly why extraverts are more likely to volunteer. One possibility is they are more likely to belong to voluntary associations or other kinds of secondary groups and for this reason are more likely to be recruited for volunteer work (Okun, Pugliese, & Rook, 2007, p. 1474). The theory that personality traits are linked to volunteering through memberships is tested by Atkins, Hart, and Donnelly (2005) in a study of American teenagers. They find that those with a more “resilient” personality (high in emotional regulation, socially skilled, and tending toward positive emotionality) are more likely to volunteer but this is not explained by a higher rate of memberships.

From the research on personality we expect gregarious and extraverted people to be able to handle with greater assurance the awkward social situations in which volunteers often find themselves. It stands to reason, then, that people who suffer from social phobias or chronic but not clinically serious social anxiety would be less inclined to volunteer. This is precisely what Handy and Cnaan (2007) find in their convenience sample of Americans, among whom the 28% who were not volunteering scored higher on the social anxiety scale. Those who did volunteer were more likely to have been persuaded by a friend or acquaintance to get involved if they suffered from social anxiety. This finding is consonant with an older body of research showing that low self-esteem and other negative self-perceptions can inhibit volunteer work.

It is intuitively plausible that empathic people, those who are adept at putting themselves in the shoes of others, are more likely to become volunteers. Using General Social Survey (GSS) data, Einolf (2008) showed that empathic concern (e.g. “I often have tender, concerned feeling for people less fortunate than me”) is positively associated with volunteering, but a later study using the same data indicated that empathy had only an indirect influence on volunteering. In this case, Wilhelm and Bekkers (2010, p. 17) added to the empathy model a variable called “principle of care,” describing the moral position that one should help those in need. This principle totally mediated the effect of empathy on volunteering: empathy “works” only if it invokes a feeling of obligation. This is an interesting indication that emotion alone is insufficient to motivate volunteerism.

The feeling of solidarity has been somewhat neglected in volunteerism studies, but it plays an important motivating role, especially in cases of volunteering for political organizations or in response to crises. After the World Trade Center attacks, the strongest predictors of whether a person volunteered to help victims were as follows: living within 10 miles of the World Trade Center; knowing a victim; experiencing sorrow (but not anger); feeling personal responsibility for aiding others and having volunteered prior to the event (Beyerlein & Sikkink, 2008, p. 196). In Mexico, volunteer work is usually referred to as act of solidarity because it is seen as a way of acting for the benefit of others or doing something for someone else that “presupposes the existence of a community to which one has specific duties” (Butcher, 2010, p. 18). Solidarity as a disposition to volunteer might indeed be more common in traditional societies but, generally speaking, when solidarity is the trigger for helping others it casts a slightly different light on the activity. It becomes less a matter of providing utility to others and more a way of expressing a desire to connect with others. The strength of the feeling of solidarity is likely to be affected by the size and structure of the group to which one belongs or aspires to belong: the larger the group, the less likely are people to be attached to it or feel responsible for its welfare. Thus a study of volunteers for credit unions in Northern Ireland found that it was in the smaller establishments that volunteers were most likely to feeling a responsibility to donate their time (Ward & McKillop, 2011).

The desire to express or strengthen a sense of personal identity also furnishes a disposition to volunteer when this activity is appropriate. Indeed, for some people, being a “helper” is their most salient identity and naturally leads to their involvement in volunteer work (Matsuba, Hart, & Atkins, 2007). Volunteering can also be a way to deal with identity problems. For example, people who are unable to find work because of age, disability, or ill health, can escape the stigma attached to these statuses by performing volunteer work (Baines & Hardill, 2008, p. 313). For Canadian women on welfare volunteer work is a way to fight the stigma of being “undeserving” and “parasitic” (Fuller, Kershaw, & Pulkingham, 2008).

Identity theory is probably better at explaining commitment to volunteering than why people take up volunteering in the first place. For example, young Spanish volunteers who identify strongly with the volunteer role are more likely to express an intention to volunteer in the future (Marta & Pozzi, 2008). Another Spanish study found that role identity as a volunteer helped predict volunteer service duration (Chacon, Vecina, & Davila, 2007). But a recent article has questioned whether there really is a single volunteer role identity, given the diverse mix of volunteer activities. In interviews with a small group of Finnish volunteers, Gronlund (2010) discerned five different role identities: (a) the influencer—fighting injustice and wanting to make the world a better place, an activist, a nonconformist, serious, values driven; (b) the helper—benevolent, compassionate, bringing comfort, understanding; (c) faith-based—bearing witness, a calling, expressing religiosity; (d) community—value of communality, loyalty, solidarity, generativity; (e) success—occupying positions of trust, leadership, being a good citizen, paying back, taking responsibility, using talents.

Attachment theory, which predicts that only when people feel reasonably secure themselves will they invest time and energy in dealing with others’ needs and sufferings (Bowlby, 1969), has been used rarely in volunteer research. This is unfortunate because it makes sense to believe people are more likely to reach out to others if they are self-confident and self-assured. According to the theory, a person’s position on the attachment avoidance dimension indicates the extent to which he or she distrusts another’s goodwill and strives to maintain independence and self-reliance. People who avoid attachment are unlikely recruits to volunteerism. In one study Dutch undergraduates were given a battery of questions to measure the strength of their attachment anxiety and avoidance. Attachment avoidance was significantly associated with lower participation in volunteer activities (Erez, Mikulincer, van Ijzendoorn, & Kroonenberg, 2008).

Many psychologists use motivational theories to explain volunteering. The best known of these adopts the functionalist viewpoint that reasons, purposes, needs, goals, plans, and motivations impel actions. The Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) identifies a finite set of motives that volunteer work can help satisfy. A description of these motives and a review of recent research using them can be found in Mannino, Snyder, and Omoto (2011). The VFI continues to prove its usefulness in volunteer research. A recent study found that, after 3 months of volunteering, only the values motive was related to time donated but after 12 months the understanding and enhancement motives were the strongest predictors, suggesting that people take up volunteering for value-driven reasons but the amount of their contribution has more to do with self-related motivations (Finkelstein, 2008, p. 1355). In her clever study Finkelstein (2008) for the first time combines the insights of both role identity theory and motivational theory. The strongest role identity was shown by volunteers motivated by understanding and enhancement needs. Another interesting topic of research is to find out why individuals vary in how important they rate particular motives for volunteering. In a study (limited to undergraduate students) Finkelstein (2010) found that those who expressed support for the value of collectivism were more likely to rate values and social motives highly. Collectivists were no more likely to volunteer than individualists but their reasons for doing so were different. Motivation can also be linked to the way in which people volunteer. A study of college students in 12 countries found that those who were motivated by career considerations (a popular but not the most often cited motivation) were more likely to engage in “episodic” than regular volunteer work (Handy et al., 2010).

The VFI has been criticized on a number of grounds (Shye, 2010). Overall, the scheme can be faulted for being eclectic with no clear theoretical basis for the functions or their overall number; the functions cannot be shown to be exhaustive or exclusive; and they are not all at the same level of generality. And learning that a person volunteers because she wants to help others begs the question of why she wants to help others in the first place. The way people reply to motives questions in surveys is also subject to desirability bias. Presenting respondents with a list of likely motives is likely to suggest reasons for volunteering that had not occurred to the respondent before. Asking people to identify the most important of the motives or to rate motives on a scale of importance obscures the fact that motivations can vary in their salience from one situation to another.

Economists assume that people are motivated by self-interest in rewards, either in the form of utilitarian goods such as business contacts and skills (as in the “investment” model) or psychological rewards (as in the “consumption” model). Although it goes against the grain of thinking of volunteer work as altruistic, it is undeniable that in many cases people volunteer for an activity only if it is in their interest to do so. In an ingenious comparison between households with multiple children in several different schools and households with multiple children in the same school, Gee (2010) found that having children in the same school (i.e., having more at stake) raised the propensity to volunteer for the school by 13 percentage points. Interests can also explain when people are most likely to accept an invitation to volunteer. If it comes from a social superior the cost of refusal is higher and the chance of acceptance goes up (Bekkers, 2010). An inventive test of the consumption model concerns volunteer firefighters. Those most responsive to emergency calls were found to have purchased a vanity plate displaying their status as firefighters. Being seen to do good works was obviously valuable to them (Carpenter & Meyer, 2010). Volunteering to make friends or social contacts also fits the consumption model. Prouteau and Wolf (2008) found that volunteers have more friends than nonvolunteers. This was not a result of self-selection into volunteering: the number of friends had no effect on volunteering. Because economists assume that people are more likely to volunteer if their opportunity costs are low, they logically assume also that if people are provided with incentives to volunteer (such as coverage of expenses) they volunteer more time. An alternative view is that incentives drive out intrinsic motivations. An Italian study finds that volunteers who do not have much intrinsic motivation to volunteer contribute more time if they are given economic incentives but they contribute less time if they are given economic incentives when they have strong intrinsic motivations (Fiorello, 2011).

Any discussion of subjective dispositions must touch on the subject of religion: religious beliefs, attitudes, and sentiments are a fertile source of volunteer motivations. The influence of religion in all its forms, most potent in the United States, has been the focus of many studies of volunteerism, as reported in Volunteers and subsequent publications. First, we see continued attention to the way in which early religious experiences socialize people into adult volunteer roles. Youth religious involvement has a positive effect on adult community participation even when adult religious involvement is controlled. Indeed, while education is the strongest predictor of community participation, religious involvement during one’s youth is a stronger predictor of adult volunteering than gender, marital status, or nativity (Perks & Haan, 2011, p. 117). Parents’ religiosity is partially accountable for how their children get engaged in the community. American adolescents whose parents are volunteers are more likely to engage in both volunteer work and social activism, whereas youths whose parents are religious are more likely to be steered away from social activism into volunteering exclusively (Caputo, 2009). Second, the search goes on for better ways to measure religion for the purposes of tracing its influence on volunteerism. For example, teenagers were asked in a recent longitudinal study, “If you were unsure of what was right or wrong in a particular situation how would you decide what to do?” They are then given four “moral schemas” from which to choose: do what would make you feel happy (expressive individualist); do what would help you get ahead (utilitarian individualist); follow the advice of a teacher, parent, or other adult you respect (relational); and do what you think God or scripture tells you is right (theistic). Those who chose the theistic schema were more likely to volunteer subsequently regardless of their level of volunteering before they answered the questions (Vaisey, 2009). Another way to measure religiosity is to look at spirituality, defined as frequency of contact with a larger world outside one’s self, as in a feeling of deep inner peace or harmony. It would seem that these dimensions of religiosity, being less public, would have less influence on volunteerism but Einolf (2011a) detected a positive association between spirituality and volunteering, quite independent of other measures of religion. [The relationship was slightly stronger for those who were not members of congregations.] Another approach to measuring the influence of religion is to see what role religious beliefs and ideas play in “narratives” of life stories and whether these life stories have any connection with volunteerism. In 1995, a subsample of MIDUS respondents answered questions on how they interpreted morality, whether their religious beliefs had changed over time, and how important religion was to their sense of self. Einolf (2011b) coded these narratives into six themes: considering religion a central part of their sense of identity, having a religious definition of morality, equating religion with helping others, feeling that God has a mission for their lives, being inspired by Jesus’s sacrifice or example, and reporting a major change or gradual increase of religious faith over time. Four of the six themes were positively related to helping others.

Human Resources

The term human resources is used to describe the individual “assets” that enable people to volunteer or condition their interest in doing volunteer work. It is because they determine access to resources and help define interests that “master statuses,” such as class, race, and gender, are of such interest to volunteer scholars. For example, in the United States, women do more volunteer work than men (despite the fact that men have “a slight advantage in resources and social capital”) because women “possess a large advantage in prosocial motivation” (Einolf, 2010, p. 16). People frequently cite lack of resources, such as free time, as a reason for not volunteering (Sundeen, Raskoff, et al., 2007). Resources are part of the vocabulary people use to justify not volunteering: they will say they do not know enough about the issues or the work required or that they would not be welcome because of their lack of resources (Sundeen et al., 2007, p. 295).

Life Course

The life course perspective assumes that current behaviors and attitudes have their roots in the past but that they change across the life course with a certain level of predictability.

Early Life

Social Context

Few would deny that people’s behavior is influenced by their social context, but this notion has taken a back seat to the idea that individual characteristics explain volunteer work. In recent years, however, more and more attention has been paid to what might be broadly characterized as ecological effects on volunteerism. Units of analysis range from the micro-level of a person’s social networks to the macro-level of countries.

Trends in Volunteering

Meaningful analyses of trends in volunteering require data gathered over several decades, and they are scarce. An annual survey of high school seniors in the United States shows an upward trend between 1974 and 2005. Until 1990, the percentage of high school seniors who participated in community service at least once per month remained stable at around 23%, but participation rose steadily thereafter, from 21% in 1990 to 34% by 2005. This trend is no doubt driven by mandated community service in high schools and students’ interest in “padding” college applications (Syvertsen et al., 2011). These data, combined with information on teen employment, show that more and more teenagers are opting not to work for pay while in high school but perform volunteer work instead, particularly if they come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, suggesting that their parents have decided that volunteering is a better “credential” for college entry (Porterfield & Winkler, 2007).

The popularity, or acceptability, of volunteer work increases with modernization. For example, in most Asian societies notions of filial piety sustain norms requiring that elders are to be honored, obeyed, and cared for by their families. Asian elders are expected to spend their time with their families in recognition of this support, and undertake defined cultural roles such as caring for grandchildren, or educating them in sociocultural norms and rituals. But modernization increases the number of older people who are living alone outside the family structure and who depend on less traditional forms of social support. One result is an increase in volunteering (Warburton & Winterton, 2010, p. 1053). Modernization also influences who does what kind of volunteer role. For example, the Iranian government’s efforts to improve health care rely heavily on volunteer contributions from women. Islamic culture discourages women from entering the paid labor force but is open to the idea that women can participate outside the home in service delivery programs as long as their husbands approve. For the women volunteers their work is a new source of status in the community—although younger and better educated women look askance on this new role, proclaiming “Only a fool will go and work for nothing” (Hoodfar, 2010, p. 498).

Modernization brings new forms of volunteerism. In the United States and other advanced industrial societies more episodic forms of volunteering, short in duration and shorn of commitment, are now preferred. This new pattern is illustrated in a study of volunteers at an animal shelter who were unwilling to make long-term commitments and insisted on more flexibility in their work schedules (Taylor, Mallinson, & Bloch, 2008, p. 407). Hustinx (2010a, p. 3) links this trend to individualization: “In contrast to traditional volunteering as a primary expression of strong and durable group memberships, volunteers today increasingly prefer individual, project-based assignments, frequently shift between organizations, and hence only develop weak organizational attachments.”

As social circumstances change, as the structure of volunteer is reshaped, the profile of the typical volunteer could also change. Different people would move into the volunteer labor force and people traditionally associated with the role drop out. One possibility has been suggested earlier: as the overall level of education in a society rises the “value” of educational credentials for volunteering declines. Conversely, as the number of regular churchgoers in society declines, the “value” of church attendance for volunteering rises because fewer people are left to do the work the church requires (Ingen & Dekker, 2010). Trend analysis includes projections about the future state of volunteering. In an ingenious analysis, Einolf (2009) uses MIDUS data to predict the state of volunteering in 2015. He estimates that the Baby Boomer cohort (born 1946 to 1955) will volunteer in slightly larger numbers and for slightly more hours than the “silent” cohort (born 1936 to 1945), thereby sustaining the increase in volunteering among the elderly that has occurred during the past several decades.

Volunteer dynamics

Volunteer dynamics refers to the process whereby people move in and out of particular volunteer assignments or the volunteer labor force as a whole. An American study found that the chances of quitting over an 8-year period were highest among volunteers who had little education, little prior experience of volunteering, been divorced or widowed, been depressed or moved recently. They were less likely to quit if they were religious or married to a spouse who was also a volunteer (Butricia, Johnson, & Zedlewski, 2009). A similar study found that the odds of quitting over a 10-year span were highest among older, less well-educated, less religious, less generative, and less socially connected volunteers (Choi & Chou, 2010). And a panel study of Americans aged 50 to 80 whose entry into and out of the volunteer labor force was followed across five time points between 2000 and 2009 found very little movement: only about 14% of older Americans took up volunteering across this span of time although a larger percentage (34.3%) dropped out (although they might have resumed volunteering later in the decade). Just over half (54%) of those who were volunteering increased the number of hours they donated. Age had no effect on the likelihood of quitting, which was more influenced by poor health, obligations to care for a parent or spouse, not attending church, and having little experience working as a volunteer (McNamara & Gonzales, 2011).

Whether or not people quit a particular volunteer assignment has something to do with their own individual characteristics (e.g., getting a new job) but it is also influenced by organizational matters, particularly those that have an immediate impact on the volunteer. This is why the organization of the local branch is more important than the structure of the organization as a whole (Hustinx & Handy, 2009). One study of older volunteers found that, of the nine factors that predicted turnover, seven were related to either the volunteers’ experience of volunteering or a characteristic of the program. Only two (higher income and better mental health) were individual attributes (Tang, Morrow-Howell, & Choi, 2010, p. 870). Volunteers show more loyalty if they have role flexibility (as in the ability to alter work schedules), adequate supervision, good training (especially where direct client services are involved), incentives (including stipends and expenses), and social recognition (e.g., awards) (Tang et al., 2009).

Volunteer dynamics are inevitably associated with satisfaction, given the volitional nature of formal helping and the fact that extrinsic rewards are rarely used as incentives. And yet the role of satisfaction in volunteer dynamics is poorly understood (Volunteers, pp. 447-452). Boezman and Ellemers (2009, p. 897) compared a sample of volunteers with a matching sample of paid staff working in the same organizations doing roughly the same jobs. Among volunteers, satisfaction with job (and in turn intention to remain as volunteers) rose when their needs for relatedness and autonomy were met. In the case of paid workers only meeting autonomy needs increased job satisfaction. Cnaan and Cascio (1999) found that management practices (e.g., reinforcement, ways of contact, selection, training, and supervision of volunteers) helped explain variability in volunteer satisfaction, commitment, and continuance.

Despite these findings, the opinion has been expressed that situational variables are too often ignored in satisfaction research (Moreno-Jiminez et al., 2010, p. 1800). A survey conducted in Israel found that overall satisfaction with volunteer assignments was positively related to level of professional supervision and negatively related to the degree of ambiguity about tasks and emotional pressure. Satisfaction with rewards was positively related to empowerment, level of support from family, level of professional supervision, and level of appreciation. Burnout was more likely among volunteers who felt they were wasting their time and less likely among those who felt appreciated (Kulik, 2007). A study of Canadian volunteers found that performing clearly defined roles with specific responsibilities enhanced satisfaction (Souza & Dhami, 2008) and a study of volunteers at a hospital center attributed lack of satisfaction to insufficient support from other volunteers and hospital staff and inadequate training and preparation (Skoglund, 2006).

One of the key insights of motivation researchers is that volunteers are more satisfied if their assignments match their reasons for volunteering, as illustrated in a recent study of hospice volunteers (Finkelstein, 2008). In another study, Spanish volunteers were more likely to show signs of burnout if they were motivated by extrinsic rewards (Moreno-Jiminez et al., 2010). Having the right motivation can mitigate the stressful effects of volunteer work. Japanese volunteers were less likely to describe their work as burdensome if they were highly motivated (Murayama, Taguchi, & Murashima, 2010). In a recent study of more than a thousand volunteers from more than 80 organizations, Stukas, Worth, Clary, and Snyder (2009) use a new index to measure the number of “matches” (between motives and “affordances”). The index predicted both satisfaction and positive emotion about volunteer activities. The results suggest that it is not enough to relying on motives alone to predict satisfaction: we also need to know what the volunteers are doing. A study of former Red Cross volunteers found that quitting was most frequently motivated by personal problems, such as competing demands from one’s job or family responsibilities: when organizational issues were mentioned they had to do with a mismatch between the volunteer’s interests and assignments or lack of support and supervision (Hustinx, 2010b).

Common sense suggests that dissatisfied volunteers are most likely to quit and the research bears this out. A study of volunteers at a rape crisis center found that satisfied workers were the least likely to say they were thinking of quitting (Hellman & House, 2006). Among Spanish volunteers intention to remain was positively influenced by the level of social integration into the organization; as measured by having good relationships with other members of the organization, receiving support from staff and other volunteers, positively evaluating the job they performed and valuing the training. These are all factors known to improve satisfaction (Hidalgo & Moreno, 2009). In an online survey, volunteers in California were asked about their satisfaction with various aspects of the volunteer experience (e.g., effectiveness, empowerment, support). Those who were satisfied with the support they received were more likely to express an intention to volunteer in the future although no other measure of satisfaction was related to intention (Garner & Garner, 2010).

Mental health and illness

Mental health and illness are not polar opposites of each other, but it seems clear that volunteering both enhances mental health and alleviates or protects against symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression. As far as depression is concerned, although one recent study found no association (Fujirawa & Kawachi, 2008), most research has confirmed that volunteers report fewer depression symptoms (Hong & Morrow-Howell, 2010) although a number of studies have detected beneficial effects only for subgroups of the population: the elderly in the case of Kim and Pai (2010), and women in the case of Cho and Bonham (2007) and Sugihara et al. (2008).

“Before and after” studies in the United Kingdom (O’Brien, Townsend, & Ebden, 2010) and the United States (Yuen et al., 2008) confirm that a spell of doing volunteer work can improve mental health although careful longitudinal analysis is needed to see if volunteering has any really long-term effects. A study of graduates of one Catholic college in the United States found that volunteer work predicted well-being (e.g., purpose in life) 13 years later, but only because it predicted volunteering later (Bowman et al., 2010, p. 25). No recent studies have asked if subgroups of the population benefit especially from being volunteers, but in an interesting survey of welfare recipients Cohen (2009) shows that those who do volunteer work feel more “empowered” (e.g., self-efficacy) as a result. The same idea that some groups benefit more than others guides the study of how people get involved in volunteer work: those who had been recruited by social workers enjoyed more mental health benefits than those who had been invited by friends. Perhaps the social workers were better at matching individuals to suitable tasks (Cheung & Kwan, 2006).

One reason why volunteers enjoy better mental health is that their psychological resources are augmented, as when, for example, helping others boosts their self-esteem (Fraser, Clayton, Sickler, & Taylor, 2009, p. 363). Another reason is that volunteering buffers against stress. A time diary study asked German and Swiss subjects whether doing volunteer work helped people recover from daily stressors to test the hypothesis that “switching off” from work during leisure time helps deal with work-induced stress. Time spent volunteering did not help people detach themselves from their job psychologically but it did enhance mastery experiences (e.g., “Tonight I learned new things”) and mastery is one component of subjective well-being (Mojza, Lorenz, Sonnentag, & Binnewies, 2010). A more conventional American study of the buffering effect of volunteering asked whether volunteering would help people deal with spousal bereavement. The results were positive: although people tend to report more depression symptoms as they age, widows who took up volunteering after their spouse’s death showed a slower rate of increase (Li, 2007).

Volunteers tend to feel better about themselves because they have more friends although this benefit might well depend on their motivation. Degli Antoni (2009) found that Italian volunteers who expressed the “values” motivation for volunteering also reported having gained new and supportive relationships while those who said they volunteered to be useful to others, for social recognition, or to make new friends reported no increase. However, when asked how many new friends they had gained since they began volunteering the best predictor was the extrinsic motivation of meeting new people. This suggests that, while extrinsically motivated volunteering might increase the size of one’s networks, only intrinsic motivation improves their quality. Motivations also play a role in a study of college students: those who volunteered for intrinsic reasons felt better than those who volunteered for extrinsic reasons, such as a desire to please others (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010).

A more holistic line of research focuses on the way in which particular combinations of roles affect mental health. Choi and Bohman (2007) create a variable in which volunteer and paid work combinations are used as dummy variables: people who were just volunteering, just working, and both working and volunteering showed fewer depression symptoms than those who were doing neither. A similar approach is used by Sugihara et al. (2008), who contrast the depression symptoms of late middle age Japanese some of whom are working only, some of whom are volunteering only, some of whom combine the roles, and some of whom are doing neither and by Hao (2008) who finds that only the combination of volunteer and work roles yields health benefits. More research is now being conducted on this topic in other countries, with quite similar results (Haski-Leventhal, 2009a; Schwingel, Niti, Tang, & Ng, 2009).

A final line of research in this area that has been hardly pursued at all focuses on the context in which volunteers work. This is quite similar to the research on satisfaction. To know if people benefit from their volunteer work it is necessary to study the characteristics of the volunteer experience; the quality of social interaction, the meaning attributed to the work, the support and guidance of staff and other volunteers are all important (Morrow-Howell, 2010, p. 4). A British study showed that the more appreciated volunteers felt, the more satisfied they were with their lives in general (McMunn, Nazroo, Wahrendorf, Breeze, & Zaninotto, 2009).

It is important to note that volunteering does not always have mental health benefits. Curvilinear relations, whereby excessive levels of commitment have negative effects, are quite common (Windsor, Anstey, & Rodgers, 2008). In any case, simply counting how many hours people donate might not be the best way to measure the impact of volunteering. An Australian study found that elderly women who had volunteered continuously over a 9-year period were in better mental health than more sporadic volunteers (Parkinson, Warburton, Sibbritt, & Byles, 2010). And some studies have found that volunteering can undermine mental health. Ironson (2007, p. 74) reports that depression is “one of the common effects associated with HIV caregiving.” This is probably a specific instance of a more general situation where the volunteer suffers from “empathic over-arousal” (Hoffman, 2008), which might also explain why people who volunteer in disaster settings, such as earthquakes, terrorist bombings, or aviation disasters, also suffer emotionally (Thormar et al., 2010).

Physical Health

The relation between volunteering and physical health has received less attention in recent research although there is a well-established connection between volunteering and lower levels of morbidity and mortality. An excellent longitudinal study by Burr, Tavares, and Mutchler (2011) found that people who volunteer one hundred hours a year or more were less likely to be hypertensive. Another panel study found that volunteering enhanced self-rated physical health and decreased functional dependency among Americans aged 60 or more although it had no effect on chronic health conditions (Tang, 2009). Continuing the research on mortality, which has generally found positive effects of volunteering on longevity, an analysis of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study data, drawing on the Volunteer Functions Inventory for motivation measurements, found that the reasons why people volunteer can make a difference to life span: respondents who volunteered for other-oriented reasons experienced reduced mortality risk relative to nonvolunteers, but respondents who volunteered for more self-oriented reasons had a risk of mortality similar to nonvolunteers (Konrath, Fuhrel-Forbis, Lou, & Brown, 2011).

Socioeconomic Benefits

In countries such as Canada and the United States it is now widely believed that volunteering can increase one’s chances of obtaining a higher education degree and, in consequence, a better job. As noted earlier, this belief is probably responsible for the recent increase in volunteering among high school and college-age students. And volunteering for career-related motives certainly is more common in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, where the educational credentialing system is highly sophisticated than it is in less-developed countries such as India and China (Handy et al. 2010).

Despite these suggestions that people volunteer to aid their job and promotion prospects, few researchers have investigated this topic in recent years. A Dutch study found that people who are volunteering when they enter the labor market for the first time get higher status jobs although volunteer status has a negative effect on income for first job. However, there are no additional payoffs in terms of status and earnings over and above mere membership in a voluntary association (Ruiter & de Graff, 2008). An Austrian study, however, did find positive wage effects from volunteering (Hackl, Halla, & Pruckner, 2007).

Conclusion

It is testimony to the productivity of scholars in the area of volunteer research that it would take a small monograph to summarize and assess the results of their work adequately. This brief review has highlighted only the key ideas embedded in the numerous publications surveyed and has limited itself largely to social survey data. The antecedents of volunteerism continue to attract the curiosity of most scholars because the decision to give one’s time away remains a puzzle to social scientists. “While no one wonders why someone may assume gainful employment, many ask why one would volunteer” (Hustinx et al., 2010, p. 11). Among the consequences of volunteering, it is health benefits, chiefly mental, that have attracted the most attention. Gerontologists are responsible for much of this research because volunteering is believed to contribute to “successful aging.” Although political and economic benefits of doing volunteer work have been documented in the past, neither has attracted as much attention as health, perhaps because the connection is somewhat less obvious. The middle stage of the process model—the experience of volunteering—has received far less scrutiny. Practical considerations, including a desire to understand how to motivate and keep volunteers, has driven much of the research on volunteer dynamics, but more needs to be learned about the volunteer experience itself, including how volunteers relate to clients, paid staff, and other volunteers. By necessity, much of this research is ethnographic and review essays such as this, focusing on journal articles publishing the results mainly of social surveys, will underreport it.

What about the future? First, we are likely to see research on volunteerism stretch disciplinary boundaries, from biology to culture. From biological studies of adults we learn that there are genetic influences on prosocial behavior (Knafo & Israel, 2008) and one recent study indicates this includes volunteerism (Son & Wilson, 2010). At the other end of the spectrum is it is likely that volunteerism is influenced by hard-to-measure cultural understandings (e.g., collectivism-individualism, traditionalism-modernism) and these need to be researched more assiduously. Second, more research will uncover ecological effects, using units of analysis as varied as social networks and countries. But ecological research must be guided by ecological theories: exactly why might social context make any difference to volunteering, in addition to individual characteristics? For example, we know that homeowners are more interested in volunteering but why would living in a community of homeowners have an incremental effect? What are the psychological mechanisms? Do community characteristics such as this affect people’s expectations and levels of social trust? (Lee & Brudney, 2010). Third, research should pay more attention to organizational context. As already noted, although most of the research on the volunteer experience and the consequences of volunteering has focused on the individual characteristics of the volunteer, the most likely determinants of volunteer satisfaction, commitment and loyalty, are to be found in the organization of the volunteer experience. Fourth, as longitudinal survey data accumulate, it becomes necessary to move beyond the repeated association of variables to begin answering questions as to why those variables are related to each other. For example, we know that education is positively related to volunteering—but why? What are the mediating factors? Fifth, the research on race, ethnicity, and immigration is almost keeping pace with the changing nature of the population, at least in countries such as Canada and the United States, but given projections of increasingly diverse populations in these and other countries it is important to maintain this focus and, if necessary, design specific surveys to make sure emerging groups are adequately represented. Finally, changing forms of volunteer work, such as online volunteering and the emergence of “more episodic, non-committal, and self-oriented types of participation” (Hustinx, 2010b, p. 236), need to receive adequate attention to ensure that social changes do not render the social science picture of volunteerism outdated. New kinds of “hybrid” organizations are emerging. They differ from traditional associations in using the needy themselves as volunteers, often for therapeutic purposes, in having to accommodate the interests of multiple constituencies, in being more inclusive and socially diverse, and in needing to be sensitive to policy debates and political maneuvering. Eliasoph (2009, 2011) has documented in detail how these developments are affecting the meaning and practice of volunteer work. These new forms are bringing new challenges to volunteer administration and supervision—how to create opportunities for volunteer work that appeal to the emerging desire for community service as a tool for self-realization and discovery, how to manage higher rates of turnover without seeing them as failures of discipline and motivation, how to handle people who either by choice or organizational dictate participate on a sporadic basis.