Neighborhood Association Participation and Formal Volunteering in Japan

We examine the effect of participation in neighborhood association (NHA) activities on volunteering using the 2010 Japanese General Social Survey data. We find that controlling for established predictors of formal volunteering such as demographic and socioeconomic variables, NHA association participation, either operationalized as a dichotomous or interval variable, positively predicts volunteering. Moreover, some of the established predictors of volunteering (e.g., marital status and associational membership) are useful in predicting NHA participation. Our results indicate a complementary relationship between volunteering and NHA participation. We discuss implications of our study for future research on community volunteering in Japan and elsewhere.