Research on the Relationship Between Rural Volunteering and Career Expectations of College Students: The Mediating Effect of Role Identity

Abstract

With the increasing employment pressure of college students and the steady promotion of China’s rural revitalization strategy, attracting college students to participate in rural revitalization has become an important issue. This study explores the relationship between rural volunteering, role identity, and career expectations of college students’ rural volunteers, and provides a theoretical basis for improving college students’ rural career expectations. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 266 college students, and the structural equation modeling and bias-corrected self-sampling methods were used to explore the logical relationship between college students’ rural volunteering and career expectations, and to examine the mediating role of role identity in them. The results show that: (1) College students’ rural volunteering helps to raise their career expectations in rural revitalization; (2) College students’ rural volunteering can promote their role identity; (3) College students’ volunteer role identity can positively influence career expectation; (4) College students’ rural volunteering positively influences career expectations through the mediation of role identity.

Keywords

college students rural rural volunteering career expectations role identity

Introduction

With the global impact of the COVID-19, the global economy has fluctuated as a result. Against the background of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control and the downward pressure of economy, college graduates are facing unprecedented employment pressure. The scale of China’s college graduates reaches 10.76 million in 2022 (X. Li, 2022). Employment is the biggest livelihood, and employment of college graduates is the top priority of stable employment. With the continuous promotion of China’s rural revitalization strategy, rural areas, as an important place to relieve employment pressure, provide a broad space for college graduates to realize employment and give full play to their talents. However, the gap between urban and rural areas has become a great resistance to attracting and retaining talents in rural areas. It is not only necessary to provide various favorable conditions for the growth of talents from the objective aspect, but also to promote the formation of correct career expectations from the subjective aspect, which has also become an important task in the current employment guidance service of colleges and universities.

Career expectation is an expression of an individual’s willingness and pursuit of a future career, as well as his or her attitudes, and perceptions toward future career (Gottfredson, 1981; Super, 1980). The career expectations of college students and their influencing factors have attracted much attention from scholars in recent years (Bajunirwe et al., 2022; Kunchai et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021; Wallace et al., 2021).Rural career expectations refer to college students’ willingness to engage in careers related to rural revitalization and development in the future. For college students in China, participating in rural volunteering, especially in rural areas, undoubtedly helps deepen their understanding of the society and have an important impact on their further thinking about their rural career expectations. However, no research has yet focused on the relationship between the two, that is, whether participation in rural volunteering has an impact on college students’ career expectations. Therefore, this study introduces the variable “rural volunteering,” which is closely related to volunteer service, to explore the relationship between rural volunteering and college students’ career expectations. In addition, for college students, participating in rural volunteering and continuously rural volunteering will further enhance their recognition of their role as rural volunteers. A review of the literature reveals that there is no research on the relationship between the three variables of rural volunteering, role identity and career expectation. So, how do rural volunteering and role identity affect career expectations, and does rural volunteering affect career expectations by influencing role identity? If so, does rural volunteering affect career expectations entirely through influencing role identity, or only partially through influencing role identity? Therefore, this study mainly used questionnaire survey method to collect data and used data analysis methods such as structural equation modeling to explore the relationship between rural volunteering, role identity, and career expectations. This study has made progress in both research content and research perspectives. Firstly, there are few studies on rural career expectations that involve rural career expectations. This study focuses on the rural career expectations of college students and expands new research content. Secondly, there are few studies at home and abroad that focus on the role of volunteer service on career expectations. This study provides a new research perspective from the perspective of volunteer involvement.

Theoretical Hypotheses

Studies have been conducted to explore college students’ career expectations from three perspectives: gender (W. Li & Xie, 2016), family (Thompson & Subich, 2006; Vautero et al., 2021), and culture (Mau, 2000; Tang et al., 1999),among which the gender perspective focuses on the influence of traditional gender norms on male and female career expectations. The family perspective focuses on how family socioeconomic backgrounds and parent-child interaction patterns affect college students’ career expectations. The cultural perspective lands on the macro level to explore the influence of different cultural patterns on college students’ career expectations.

Based on the work engagement theory borrowed from the field of organizational behavior, this study explores the relationship between college students’ rural volunteering and career expectations from the perspective of rural volunteering. At the same time, it introduces role identity theory and takes role identity as a mediating variable of rural volunteering and career expectations, so as to deepen the exploration of the mechanism of action between them.

Rural Volunteering and Career Expectations

Since rural volunteering is a relatively new concept with few relevant studies, this study borrows from work engagement theory and treats rural volunteering as an extension of the specific domain of work engagement. Work engagement refers to the ability of organizational members to fully integrate into their work roles and freely express themselves, which mainly includes three dimensions: physiology, cognition, and emotion. Later, the connotation of work engagement has been enriched through continuous expansion of the academic community, and overall, work engagement mainly refers to a positive and complete emotional and cognitive state related to work (Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli et al., 2002).Studies related to work engagement have also helped to understand the relationship between rural volunteering and career expectations. Similar studies have been conducted to show that in the work domain, work engagement contributes to job satisfaction (Saks, 2006), improve task completion performance (Bakker et al., 2012), and reduce the probability of leaving (Alarcon & Edwards, 2011), in addition, work engagement helps employees to demonstrate organizational citizenship behaviors (Kataria et al., 2013).

Rural volunteering refers to the fact that volunteers regard rural volunteering behavior as part of their life as a whole, which is expressed as positive, satisfying, and rural volunteering-related experiences that individuals have in rural volunteering, mainly including three aspects of vitality, dedication, and focus (Bakker et al., 2008). Studies on rural volunteering found that rural volunteering could increase their volunteer service time (Shantz et al., 2014), and another study similarly showed that volunteers with high rural volunteering were more satisfied with the rural volunteering activities they participated in and more willing to continue rural volunteering (Vecina et al., 2012). This shows that the positive impact effect of rural volunteering as a positive and fulfilling state is beginning to be widely recognized. From a psychological perspective, self-efficacy theory also helps us understand the impact of rural volunteering on career expectations. Self-efficacy is the degree of confidence people have in their ability to use the skills they have to perform a job behavior. Past success or failure is an important factor affecting self-efficacy. Self-efficacy might affect people’s behavioral choices, motivational efforts, cognitive processes, and affective processes. The volunteer investment of college students will bring positive changes to the countryside. These achievements can enhance the self-efficacy of college student volunteers, make them believe that they can create outstanding achievements in the countryside, and further increase their willingness to devote themselves to the cause of rural revitalization. Therefore, when volunteers devote themselves to rural volunteering, it will inevitably help to increase their understanding and awareness of the rural, enhance their love for the rural. Moreover, they will also understand more deeply the significance of participating in rural volunteering, which will certainly have an impact on their career expectations, and choose to be willing to devote themselves to the cause of rural revitalization when they are employed. Accordingly, the research hypothesis is proposed:

h1: The rural volunteering of college students is helpful to enhance their career expectations in rural revitalization.

Rural Volunteering and Role Identity

According to social identity theory, Role identity is an individual’s self-definition of the setoff roles he or she has, an understanding and evaluation of a particular role (Mccall & Simmons, 1978).Volunteer role identity describes the extent to which individuals recognize the social role they play and refers to their attitude, perceptions, and recognition of their identity as a volunteer (Finkelstein & Brannick, 2007; Grube & Piliavin, 2016). In terms of volunteer role identity, it has been found that volunteer-related experiences and behaviors lead individuals to develop a volunteer role identity. Identification with a particular volunteer program organization they previously participated in leads volunteers to further participate in the organization’s volunteer activities, and through this experience they build an identification with the role of “volunteer” in a broader sense (Grube & Piliavin, 2016).In addition, people who engage in a volunteer service together are more likely to establish an identity, and by continuously participating in rural volunteering, and they will establish a social network with others, which will provide support and help to each participant and gradually form a reciprocal community, thus strengthening the volunteer identity (Zhang & Guo, 2021). Based on the above analysis, this study proposes the following hypothesis:

h2: College students’ rural volunteering can promote their role identity.

Role Identity and Career Expectations

Individuals may have multiple roles at the same time, and when a role is heavier in an individual’s self-concept, the higher the individual’s acceptance, and recognition of that role, the more likely he or she is to repeat the behaviors associated with that role. That is, the stronger an individual’s identification with a role, the more likely his or her behavior be influenced by the role (Albert et al., 2000). It was found that volunteer role identity was significantly associated with willingness to volunteer, willingness to leave the organization, time spent rural volunteering, and donation behavior (Lee & Call, 1999; Penner & Finkelstein, 1998).Research on poverty alleviation volunteers shows that sharing behavior on social media platforms during the process of rural volunteering for poverty alleviation can motivate individuals to comply with the role norms of “poverty alleviation volunteers”and thus gradually form a role identity, this will further affect their expectations and choices about future careers (Luo & Wang, 2012).In addition, a high level of volunteer role identity helps volunteers to adopt a positive and mature approach to problems (Gao, 2012; Wang et al., 2012). College students will encounter various difficulties in the process of rural volunteering in rural areas, both from the material level, such as the shortage of resources, and from the spiritual level, such as misunderstanding and opposition from others, etc. These pressures will affect their psychology, and then they are unwilling to continue to engage in rural related work. As a result, role identification can enhance their resilience, which is a psychological trait of overcoming adversity and recovering from the trauma of adversity. For college student volunteers, a higher identity means affirmation of their voluntary activities, which helps them to face various challenges bravely, so as to be willing to devote themselves to the cause of rural revitalization. It is the identification with the rural service volunteer that makes people more willing to engage in rural volunteering activities and even influences their future career choices, expecting to engage in activities related to rural development. Accordingly, this study proposes the following hypothesis:

h3: College students’ role identity can influence career expectations.

Identity is formed by individuals in the process of interacting with others, in which they continuously negotiate with social culture through the use of various symbols, thus forming identity (Mead, 1934). Participating in volunteer service activities is a process of interaction with different subjects such as service recipients and governments. Role identification not only directly affects career expectations, but also may play a mediating role between volunteer investment and career expectations. Based on the existing research results, this paper proposes the following hypothesis:

h4: Rural volunteering of college students affects career expectations through role identity.

To sum up, this study takes college student rural volunteers as the research object, and explores the relationship between their rural volunteering, role identity, and career expectations. The relationship model among the three is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Hypothetical model of the relationship between rural volunteering and career expectations with role identity as a mediating variable.

Methodology

Data Sources and Sample Characteristics

This study was distributed through Youth League committees of some Chinese universities, rural volunteer lead teachers, and rural volunteer work teams from March to July 2022. Through the condition of “participating in rural volunteer service activities,” 307 questionnaires were finally obtained with 266 valid samples. The samples included college students who are studying and some college students who have already been employed. The coverage of the sample group was relatively comprehensive and could better meet the requirements of this study. The basic characteristics of the samples were shown in Table 1. The distribution of demographic variables such as gender, identity status, and source of household registration was relatively balanced, which could reduce the impact of the sample on the research results to a certain extent, that was, the sample had a certain representativeness.

Table 1.

Basic Characteristics of the Sample (N = 266).

Variable name	Sample size	Proportion
Gender
Male	107	40.2
Female	159	59.8
Identity status
College student	24	9
Undergraduate	122	45.9
Postgraduate	15	5.6
Working in the city	75	28.2
Working in the rural	30	11.3
Source of household registration
City	110	41.4
Rural	156	58.6

Research Tools

Rural Volunteering Scale

This study adopts the adapted “work engagement” questionnaire (UWES—9, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale) (Schaufeli et al., 2006), which consists of nine questions. Typical questions are: “I am immersed in my rural volunteering,”“When I get up in the morning, I want to go and do my rural volunteering,” and “I am passionate about my rural volunteering” etc. A five-point Likert scale was used, ranging from ”1 =strongly disagree" to “5 = strongly agree.” The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale had good construct validity with RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.01, GFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.99. The Cronbach’s α coefficient of this scale was 0.97.

Role Identity Scale

This study adopts the role identity scale of “Role-person merger”(PETER L. CALLERO) (Callero et al., 1987), which consists of five questions. Typical questions are: “Being a rural volunteer means more to me than rural volunteering in the rural” and “Being a rural volunteer is an important part of me"etc. A 5-point Likert scale was used, ranging from ”1 = strongly disagree" to “5 = strongly agree.” The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale had good construct validity with RMSEA = 0.16, SRMR = 0.04, GFI = 0.98, and CFI = 0.97. The Cronbach’s α coefficient of the scale in this study was .78.

Career Expectation Scale

This study used self-designed Career Expectations Scale, which consists of four questions. Typical questions are: “I am willing to combine my future career plan with rural revitalization” and “I am willing to work on rural revitalization in the future/continue to work on rural revitalization” etc. A five-point Likert scale was used, ranging from “1 = strongly disagree” to “5 = strongly agree.” The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale had good construct validity with RMSEA = 0.08, SRMR = 0.01, GFI = 0.99, CFI = 0.99. The Cronbach’s α coefficient of this scale was .94.

Research Results

Common Method Bias Test

In this study, self-reported data were used, so there might be common method bias problems. For the possible common method bias in this study, anonymity, and forward and backward scoring were used to control the possible common method bias in the measurement process. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test all self-assessed items for common method bias. χ²/df = 9.68, CFI = 76, GFI = 0.59, AGFI = 0.48, NFL = 0.74, and RMSEA = 0.18, so there was no serious common method bias problem.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Correlation Analysis

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using AMOS 24.0 to test the validity of each variable in this study, and the results were shown in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, the combined reliability (CR) of each variable was between 0.736 and 0.980, and the average variation extraction (AVE) was basically close to or greater than 0.5, so we believed that the above variables had good convergent validity to measure the target latent variables.

Table 2.

Convergent Validity Test of Model Variables.

Path			Std.	Unstd.	S.E.	p-Value	SMC	CR	AVE
Q1	<—	Rural volunteering	0.869	1			0.755	0.98	0.843
Q2	<—	Rural volunteering	0.925	0.93	0.03	***	0.856
Q3	<—	Rural volunteering	0.918	0.802	0.031	***	0.843
Q4	<—	Rural volunteering	0.932	0.811	0.03	***	0.869
Q5	<—	Rural volunteering	0.935	0.861	0.031	***	0.874
Q6	<—	Rural volunteering	0.944	0.865	0.03	***	0.891
Q7	<—	Rural volunteering	0.884	0.967	0.039	***	0.781
Q8	<—	Rural volunteering	0.933	0.844	0.031	***	0.87
Q9	<—	Rural volunteering	0.921	0.838	0.032	***	0.848
Q10	<—	Role identity	0.441	1			0.194	0.736	0.385
Q11	<—	Role identity	0.704	1.253	0.187	***	0.496
Q12	<—	Role identity	0.287	0.642	0.107	***	0.082
Q13	<—	Role identity	0.601	1.222	0.195	***	0.361
Q14	<—	Role identity	0.891	1.632	0.227	***	0.794
Q15	<—	Career expectations	0.882	1			0.778	0.946	0.814
Q16	<—	Career expectations	0.887	0.962	0.036	***	0.787
Q17	<—	Career expectations	0.909	1.035	0.047	***	0.826
Q18	<—	Career expectations	0.929	1.039	0.045	***	0.863

***

means at the signifificant level of 0.001.

In addition, Pearson correlation analysis was performed on the main shallow variables, and the square root of the AVE of the variable and the correlation coefficient of the variable with any of the other variables were compared to test the differential validity of the variables. After testing, as shown in Table 3, the variables in this study had good discriminant validity.

Table 3.

Pearson Correlation and AVE Square Root values.

	Rural volunteering	Role identity	Career expectations
Rural volunteering	.918
Role identity	.435**	.62
Career expectations	.700**	.479**	.902

Note. Diagonal numbers are AVE square root values.

The correlation coefficients between the variables were shown in Table 3. Rural volunteering was significantly and positively correlated with role identity and career expectations, and role identity was significantly and positively correlated with career expectations, and the results were in line with theoretical expectations.

Hypothesis Testing

The effect of rural volunteering on career expectations was tested using structural equation modeling. The model was established with rural volunteering as the independent variable, career expectations as the dependent variable, and role identity as the mediating variable, and the fit index of the model were tested. The model contained a total of 3 latent variables and 18 explicit variables. The results of the measured measurement model found that the factor loadings of each index were significant (p < .001), indicating that each latent variable was well represented by its respective index.

Structural equation model was constructed according to the test procedure of mediation effect proposed by existing researchers. The statistical results are shown in Figure 2, showing a good model fit (χ²/df = 1.904, RMSEA = 0.058, GFI = 0.910, NFI = 0.953, RFI = 0.942, IFI = 0.977, TLI = 0.972, CFI = 0.977), indicating a good match between the hypothetical model and the collected data.

Figure 2.

The mediating effect of role identity between rural volunteering and career expectations.

As shown in Table 4, the non-standardized path coefficient of rural volunteering on role identity was 0.438, with all p-values less than .01, indicating that each unit of rural volunteering increased role identity by 0.438 units, respectively, and hypothesis h1 was supported. The non-standardized path coefficient of role identity on career expectation was 0.757 with significant p-values less than .01, indicating that for every unit of role identity, the strength of career expectations increased by 0.757 units, and hypothesis h2 was supported. The non-standardized path coefficient of rural volunteering on career expectations was 0.335 with a significance p-value less than .01, indicating that each unit of rural volunteering increased the intensity of career expectations by .335 units, and hypothesish3was supported.

Table 4.

Table of Path Coefficients.

Path			Standardized coefficient	Non-standardized coefficient	S.E.	C.R.	p	Hypothesis
Role identity	<—	Rural volunteering	0.769	0.438	0.065	6.77	***	Support
Career expectations	<—	Role Identity	0.509	0.757	0.151	5.002	***	Support
Career expectations	<—	Rural volunteering	0.395	0.335	0.062	5.383	***	Support

To examine the mediating effect of role identity between rural volunteering and career expectations, the Bias-corrected Bootstrap method was used, which is now widely accepted in academia. For this purpose, AMOS 24.0 was used to set the Bootstrap to5,000 times and the confidence interval was taken as 95% to test the mediating effect, and the results were shown in Table 5. In the analysis of the mediating effect of rural volunteering on career expectations, the indirect effect β = 0.332 (Boot LLCI = 0.168 Boot ULCI = 0.597), the confidence interval of the indirect effect did not contain 0, indicating that the mediating effect of role identity between rural volunteering and career expectations existed. The confidence interval of the direct effect did not contain 0, indicating that the mediating effect of role identity between rural volunteering and career expectations. The direct effect confidence interval does not contain 0, indicating that the mediating effect of role identity between rural volunteering and career expectations was partially mediated, and the mediating effect size (indirect effect/total effect) was (0.332/0.667 = 49.8%), and the hypothesis h4 was supported, that was, rural volunteering enhanced the degree of career expectations by enhancing individuals’ role identity.

Table 5.

Mediating Effect Test.

Type of effect	Estimated value	95% confidence interval		p-Value
Type of effect	Estimated value	Lower limit	Upper limit	p-Value
Indirect effect	0.332	0.168	0.597	.001
Direct effect	0.335	0.083	0.535	.017
Total effect	0.667	0.569	0.784	.001

Discussion

This study focuses on the relationship between college students’ rural volunteering and career expectations, and examines the mediating role of role identity in it. Data analysis shows that there is a positive correlation between college students’ rural volunteering and career expectations, and that rural volunteering can not only directly affects college students’ career expectations, but also indirectly affects career expectations by affecting role identity.

Rural Volunteering and Career Expectations

The results of structural equation modeling analysis show that college students’ rural volunteering can influence their career expectations. This is consistent with existing studies (Shantz et al., 2014; Vecina et al., 2012). This reflects, to some extent, the contribution of participating in volunteer activities and making rural volunteering to employment and work. Some studies have found that participation in rural volunteering can increase workers’ human capital, enhance social links, promote interpersonal trust, and improve personal adaptability, which in turn increases workers’ chances of obtaining jobs and improving job compensation (Piliavin & Callero, 1991). Rural volunteering is beneficial for volunteers’ social engagement and social integration, and social engagement is actually strongly associated with emotional stability, extroversion, and open-mindedness, traits that enable individuals to perform better in terms of individual productivity and teamwork (Heineck, 2011).

The reason why rural volunteering can influence college students’ career expectations is as follows: On the one hand, the practice process of college students’ participation in rural volunteering is the process of college students’ gradual identification with social responsibility (Zhu & Xu, 2017). Participation in volunteer service and rural volunteering can prompt college students to clarify their more intuitive perceptions of the social responsibilities they should take on for the country, society, and others, and enhance their sense of belonging and collective honor. In addition, through social practice, college students can gain direct experience, which helps them to further clarify their social roles, and experience social responsibility in role taking, and then provide conditions for transforming into responsible behaviors (Wei, 2014). On the other hand, rural volunteering, as a voluntary contribution of personal time and energy to promote human development, social progress, and social welfare without material reward (Fan, 2011), has an intrinsic influence on the shaping of young students’ values, and young people in rural volunteering activities often have a psychological need for self-satisfaction at a high moral level (Musick & Wilson, 2013). Rural volunteering is a process of giving,in which college students can get in touch with different groups, especially with the disadvantaged, which can enrich their social emotions, build the foundation of “friendliness,” stimulate the most simple and basic love, compassion, and responsibility, and completely release the good moral will hidden in their hearts (Zhu & Xu, 2017). This means that rural volunteering helps to improve their moral status, which will inevitably affect their willingness to further dedicate themselves to the rural, and even change their career expectations.

This study further clarifies the relationship between college students’ participation in volunteer service activities and employment. Participation in voluntary activities not only improves their employability objectively, but also improves their expectation of employment in rural areas subjectively. Existing studies mainly focus on the role of volunteer service in improving employability. For example, volunteer service can contact society, improve communication, and coordination ability, exercise teamwork ability, and better adapt to society (Huang, 2018; Zhang & Guo, 2021). These studies ignore the effect of volunteering on the subjective willingness of college students. Even if college students improve their employability by participating in volunteering, they will not choose to work in rural areas if they lack strong career expectations. Therefore, the discussion of college students’ subjective rural career expectations not only deepens the existing research, but also provides reference for how to enhance the possibility of college students’ employment in rural areas.

Role Identity and Career Expectations

The results of the correlation analysis showed that the role identity of college students and their career expectations showed a positive correlation, that is, the higher the level of role identity, the more likely they were to establish the desire to work in rural revitalization. The results of structural equation model analysis also showed that role identity has a positive effect on career expectations. This is consistent with existing studies (Luo & Wang, 2012; Zhang & Guo, 2021). the findings of this study further confirm the positive effect of role identity on people’s behavior and their ability to take the initiative to overcome various difficulties even when facing greater challenges. The studies on teachers showed that despite facing a lack of resources, they have a deeper understanding of the role of teachers as engineers of the human soul. This sense of experience is conducive to the generation of their inner emotions and still maintain a strong willingness to stay in their jobs (Granziera & Perera, 2019), which in fact reflects an emotional attachment.

In recent years, the role of emotion has received increasing attention and the “emotion turn” has emerged in academia world, with a rapid development of research on emotions (Turner & Jan, 2006), which emphasizes the role of emotions formed in interaction on people’s behavior (Reddy, 2001; Shilling, 2002). The role of emotions is analyzed in detail by Collins’s theory of interactional ritual chains, which states that humans living in specific situations where individuals come gather with each other through interactions, which not only in physical proximity to each other, but also because of shared concerns that lead to identity and a sense of belonging to the group. At the same time, in this process, people develop continuous emotional energy as well as strong emotional connections, and these emotions become the motivation for their next actions and choices (Collins, 2017).

For college student rural volunteers, they continuously realize their volunteer identity through rural volunteering. Rural volunteering does not bring more material rewards, and they even need to pay some material resources. When facing such challenges, it is this identity that can reduce the burnout caused by resource payment, increase their emotional connection with the rural, and the service recipients, and include the rural, that is, the service recipients, in their future career planning, and are more willing to engage in work related to rural revitalization.

In addition, the results of structural equation modeling analysis show that rural volunteering not only directly influences career expectations, but also can indirectly influence career expectations by affecting role identity. This is consistent with existing studies (Grube & Piliavin, 2016; Luo & Wang, 2012).According to social role theory, a complete role-playing process usually goes through three steps: role expectation, apprehension, and the occurrence of role behavior. Role expectation refers to the social expectations and requirements for a role behavior, and is an external factor that influences individual role behavior. Role comprehension refers to a role-player’s awareness and understanding of role norms and role requirements. Role practice is the actual process or activity of role-playing. For rural volunteers, only when they are truly engaged in rural volunteering can they truly understand the intrinsic value of the role of volunteers and generate identification with the role of volunteer. In addition, each of us plays a series of roles in society. When conflicts arise between different roles, or when the role-players feel that their real roles do not match their inner perceptions of their roles, various role-playing disorders will arise, such as role tension and role conflict. For college volunteers, these phenomena are inevitable, but it is in the conflicts, and contradictions that they gradually deepen their understanding of the role of rural volunteers and thus form the role identity of rural volunteers.

This finding goes beyond the previous perspective of social psychology, which emphasizes that identity is an internal driving force that affects individual intention (Grube & Piliavin, 2016) and ignores the formation process of identity. Based on the perspective of psychology, this study deeply reveals how volunteer activities and identity jointly affect college students’ rural career expectations. It further deepens the relationship between identity and career expectation, and also provides enlightenment for how to enhance the rural career expectation of college students by increasing their volunteer investment in practice.

Conclusion and Research Value

Conclusion

This study explored the relationship between college students’ rural volunteering and career expectations, and verified the mediating role of role identity. The results show that: (1) Rural volunteering has an influence on college students’ role identity and career expectations, and college students with a high level of rural volunteering are more likely to form career expectations to devote themselves to the cause of rural revitalization. (2) Role identity also has a significant positive effect on college students “career expectations, and the more college students identify with rural volunteers, the higher their rural career expectations are. (3) Role identity plays a part in mediating the relationship between college students” rural volunteering and career expectations. Rural volunteering can not only directly affect college students’ career expectations, but also indirectly affect career expectations through role identity. Specifically, a higher level of rural volunteering enhances college students’ willingness to join the cause of rural revitalization, and at the same time, their continuous rural volunteering strengthens their identity as rural volunteers, which further strengthens the career expectation of engaging in rural revitalization- related work.

Research Value

Theoretical Contributions

The theoretical contributions of this study are: First, it enriches study of rural volunteering. Although many studies have focused on college students’ rural volunteering, few studies have introduced the new concept of rural volunteering into the study. Based on this, this study based on the introduction of rural volunteering and considering the real situation in China, develops a scale related to rural volunteering, and promotes the localization of rural volunteering. Second, the study enriches the study of career expectations. There have been studies on the career expectations of college students and young people from the perspectives of gender, family, and culture, but there is little research on the influence of rural volunteering in China. This study explores the impact of rural volunteering on career expectations, clarifies the logical relationship between rural volunteering and career expectations, and enriches the research in the field of career expectations. Third, it deepens the study on the mechanism of rural volunteering and career expectations. This study adopts role identity to explain the mechanism of rural volunteering on career expectations, emphasizes the mediating effect of role identity, and clarifies the specific mechanism of rural volunteering and career expectations. Fourth, it deepens the study of the role mechanism of rural volunteering and career expectations. This study adopts role identity to explain the mechanism of the role of rural volunteering on career expectations, and emphasizes the mediating effect of role identity in it.

Practical Enlightenment

The research results on the influence mechanism of rural volunteering on career expectations remind us that, firstly, in college students’ career development education, we cannot ignore the important role of college students’ rural volunteering activities, further explore the effective forms of rural volunteering and realize the organic combination of all kinds of rural volunteering activities. Avoid college students’ participation in volunteer activities only in form, but achieve substantial participation, so as to truly promote volunteers to achieve commitment to let students feel life and sense of responsibility in the experience of various voluntary commitment. It also helps college students to form a strong sense of social responsibility and realize the unity of personal value and social value, while forming career expectations for rural service. Secondly, to increase the publicity of rural volunteers, the excellent moral quality of responsibility to the country, society and others embodied by the deeds of advanced volunteers triggers them to pursue and imitate the role model figures and exemplary behaviors. By enhancing their sense of identification with the role of volunteers, their willingness to participate in rural volunteering activities. At the same time, for the volunteers who participate in rural volunteer service activities is further enhanced. At the same time, the school should promptly publicize the deeds of the volunteers who participated in the rural volunteering activities, so that more students in the school can understand their rural volunteering activities. Through the publicity of their deeds, the school will increase the recognition of other students, so as to continuously strengthen their role identity.

Research Limitations and Future Prospects

Limitations

Firstly, the sample size of this survey is small, while only some colleges and universities are used as examples, and the survey is not broad enough, which may lead to relatively unrepresentative samples. Second, this study uses cross-sectional data, so we cannot see the trend of rural volunteering time. Although the initial threshold of “whether or not you have participated in volunteer activities” is set, there are no more options to distinguish the length of “rural volunteering,” and the effect of rural volunteering time on rural career expectation may have a significant impact. Third, although this paper uses a very robust mechanism to test for mediating effects, due to the limitation of space, and research, it fails to explore the causal mechanism in depth and lacks the identification of causal relationships.

Future Prospects

Future studies are intended to improve the following aspects: Firstly, to expand the scope of the study, and strive to include more geographic areas and types of colleges and universities as sample representatives, so as to increase the universality and representativeness of the sample and avoid estimation bias due to sampling errors. Secondly, the questionnaire should be improved continuously, especially the warning of “reverse questions” to ensure more accurate measurement; meanwhile, the control variables in the questionnaire should be increased appropriately to avoid bias caused by missing variables. Thirdly, we should follow up the sample of rural volunteers in depth and try to collect data for more than 1 year, so as to consider the profound influence of the time effect of rural volunteering on rural career expectations and make the research findings more comprehensive and scientific. Fourth, we should continue to improve the research methodology and design a model that is relatively easy to identify the causal mechanism, so that the regression relationship tends to be stable and reliable.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Yingying Chen for her valuable suggestions and comments on this article.

Authors’ Contributions

OL, NJ and QX designed the study and wrote the manuscript. LD analyzed the data. OL, NJ, and QX and LD modified the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study received funding from 2020 Fujian Provincial Social Science Planning General Project “Fujian HIBL Trip in the Coastal Areas and the Hinterland Boosts Rural Revitalization" (FJ2020B027), 2022 Fujian Provincial Department of Science and Technology Innovation Strategy Research Project “Study on the Transformation and Upgrading Path of Traditional Marine Salt Industry in Fujian Province” (2022R0114)

Institutional Review Board Statement

The research does not involve humans or animals and conforms to the ethical standards. The academic ethics committee of Xiamen University of Technology approved this study protocol, the approval number is: XMUT-SCIT -AEC 2022-006.

ORCID iD

Jianchao Ni

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