Mean Well to Do Good?
Volunteer Motivation
Re-Examined1
Ursula Häfliger2 and Simon
Hug3
CIS and IPZ, Universität
Zürich
Département de science
politique, Université de Genève
Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the
Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago (April 2-5, 2009)
First preliminary draft: Jul 12, 2009
Abstract
The provision of social services in most developed countries has
become more and more difficult to ensure, and many states rely
increasingly on volunteer work. What motivates volunteers is, however,
still a relatively under-researched topic. At the theoretical level,
there is a consensus that pro-social behaviour is, at least in parts,
motivated by altruism, the function of which, however, remains
contested. In some recent studies, social psychologists have identified
functional categories of volunteering, according to the concept of
attitude functions, for volunteer motivation and found evidence that
people were more likely to express a willingness to volunteer if they
were confronted with persuasive messages according to their volunteer
function. Empirical studies relying on volunteer surveys face,
however, problems of self-selection. To overcome these problems, we
carried out a lab experiment to test volunteer motivation in
participants and tested the
congruence of participants' motivation and their response to persuasive
messages according to these attitude functions. The results suggests
that there is a systematic interaction between these elements.
Footnotes:
1The financial support of the Swiss National Science
Foundation (Grant No. 100012-117733 is gratefully acknowledged.
2 Center for Comparative and International
Studies; Institut für Politikwissenschaft; Universität Zürich;
Seilergraben49; 8001 Zürich; Switzerland; email:
haefliger@ipz.uzh.ch
3 Département de science politique, Faculté des sciences
économiques et sociales; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont
d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; phone ++41 22 379 83 78; email:
simon.hug@unige.ch
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