Elderly Volunteering in Europe: The Relationship Between Volunteering and Quality of Life Depends on Volunteering Rates

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper investigates the effect of volunteering on quality of life (QoL) in 50+ populations across European countries...     

Episodic Volunteering in Sport Events: A Seven-Country Analysis

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Given its ubiquitous nature, sport events are one of the most popular venues for episodic volunteering around the world....     

Ethnographies of Volunteering: Providing Nuance to the Links Between Volunteering and Development

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper explores how ethnographic approaches to third sector and nonprofit studies allow for context-based...     

Legacy Volunteering: A Test of Two Theories of Intergenerational Transmission

Sociological theory suggests two reasons that volunteering runs in families. The first is that parents act as role models. The second is that parents who volunteer pass on the socioeconomic resources needed to do volunteer work. Panel data from two generations of women (N = 1,848) are analyzed to see how much influence family socioeconomic status and mother's volunteering have on daughter's volunteer careers. More highly educated women and women whose mothers volunteered donate more hours initially, but only family socioeconomic status increases volunteering over the life course.     

Explaining the Varieties of Volunteering in Europe: A Capability Approach

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Volunteer rates vary greatly across Europe despite the voluntary sector’s common history and tradition. This...     

Volunteering and Wellbeing Among Ageing Adults: A Longitudinal Analysis

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Previous scholarship has shown evidence of a positive relationship between volunteering and improved measures of mental...     

Collective and Reflexive Styles of Volunteering: A Sociological Modernization Perspective

This paper presents a theory-guided examination of the (changing) nature of volunteering through the lens of sociological modernization theories. Existing accounts of qualitative changes in motivational bases and patterns of volunteering are interpreted against the background of broader, modernization-driven social-structural transformations. It is argued that volunteer involvement should be qualified as a biographically embedded reality, and a new analytical framework of collective and reflexive styles of volunteering is constructed along the lines of the ideal-typical biographical models that are delineated by modernization theorists. Styles of volunteering are understood as essentially multidimensional, multiform, and multilevel in nature. Both structural-behavioral and motivational-attitudinal volunteering features are explored along the lines of six different dimensions: the biographical frame of reference, the motivational structure, the course and intensity of commitment, the organizational environment, the choice of (field of) activity, and the relation to paid work.     

Volunteering and the gender division of labour: A Franco-British comparison

Cross-national analyses of the gender division of labour usually focus on employment and domestic labour. This paper argues that formal and informal voluntary work should be included in such analyses. Using available secondary sources, the paper compares the gender division of voluntary work in Britain and France – two countries with well-documented differences and similarities concerning employment and domestic labour. The paper reveals that French women, with a higher commitment to the labour market and a slightly larger share of the burden of domestic labour, have a higher commitment to formal voluntary activity but engage less in informal volunteering than their British counterparts whereas French men, with shorter hours in employment and a slightly smaller contribution to domestic labour, undertake more formal and informal voluntary work than their British counterparts. In France, men consistently undertake more voluntary work than women whilst in Britain, there is a degree of gender equality in formal voluntary work but women undertake significantly more informal voluntary work than men. The paper explains the differences and similarities found by considering the role of the state and social policy, the question of ‘time availability’, and the question of what motivates individuals to undertake voluntary work.     

青年志愿者心理资本对志愿行为影响的分析研究

志愿者心理资本包括感恩感戴、责任使命、乐观希望、坚强韧性和自我效能5个维度,且各维度正向影响志愿行为。在对18名青年志愿者研究基础上,构建了志愿者心理资本影响志愿行为的机制模型,即社会支持和志愿动机在心理资本与志愿行为关系中起链式中介效应,角色认同在其关系中起调节效应。为促进志愿行为可持续发展,就要培育志愿者为国谋发展、为民造福祉的价值理念,赋予其更加崇高美丽的价值形象;培育志愿者理性强烈的需要动机,促使其坚守自利利他,法皆具足的初心和使命;培育志愿者积极乐观的心理预期和理性的归因方式,涵养强大的心理复原力;构建完备、体贴、温馨的社会支持系统,形成志愿行为产生、稳定和可持续发展的合力。     

Food Insecurity in Regional Rural Australia

ABSTRACT

This study explores food relief recipients' and providers’ experiences and perceptions of food insecurity in a large regional town in Australia. The cross-sectional qualitative methods research design incorporated survey-based interviews of four food relief services, a focus group of food relief recipients and two biographical interviews of food insecurity experience. Qualitative thematic data analysis provided insight into the respondents’ experience and perceptions of the causes of food insecurity, the provision of food relief and the limitations of a charity model. An ecological-model-based analysis shows that food insecurity is the product of multiple complex causes including chronic and situational poverty. Political dimensions emerged in terms of the policies that are developed or omitted.

IMPLICATIONS

• Social workers need to advocate for the human right to food and strengthen capacity at multiple levels to improve food security.

• Improving access to quality and culturally appropriate food requires the implementation of multiple strategies.

     

Volunteering and Income Inequality: Cross-National Relationships

Wilkinson and Pickett, in their 2009 book The Spirit Level, found that, in rich countries, income inequality was negatively associated with a range of indicators of well-being, but they did not consider the relationship with volunteering. This paper seeks to fill that gap. Using existing data sources, it shows that, among European countries, higher levels of volunteering are associated with lower levels of income inequality. The relationship is particularly strong for regular and sport-related volunteering. The basic Spirit Level thesis is therefore confirmed as applicable to volunteering. However, while the thesis involves just one theoretical explanation for the income inequality/well-being relationship, namely status anxiety, in the case of volunteering, other variables are also found to be at play, including government social spending, available leisure time and geo-historical traditions. It is concluded that, while high levels of volunteering, as a form of social capital, can be seen as one of a number of features of more equal societies, disentangling cause and effect may require a more holistic approach to understanding its contribution to the generation and sustaining of social well-being.     

Elderly Volunteering and Well-Being: A Cross-European Comparison Based on SHARE Data

This paper, based on Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data, analyzes the relation between volunteering and well-being among 30,023 Europeans aged 50 and above in 12 countries. There is an overall positive correlation between volunteering and perceived health, life satisfaction, and self-life expectancy and a negative correlation to depression. However, in some countries the correlation is much stronger than in others.     

Corporate Volunteering: Benefits and Challenges for Nonprofits

In the frame of corporate social responsibility, corporate volunteering is almost exclusively studied from the point of view of companies, while the perspectives of nonprofit organizations are neglected. Hence, this article focuses on the perspective of managers of nonprofit organizations on volunteer partnership projects with for‐profit companies. In the center of this article lie nonprofit managers' strategy and motivation for participating in corporate volunteering, conception of corporate volunteer activities, and the often‐cited win‐win‐win aspect. Key findings suggest that a majority of the questioned nonprofits lack strategic behavior and management tools for undertaking volunteer partnership projects with companies. Nevertheless, corporate volunteering is widely perceived as an opportunity and a promising method of raising donations for nonprofit organizations. This article suggests that the key to successful future cooperation between nonprofits and profit‐oriented organizations lies in the processes of internal evaluation and subsequent strategy development.     

Individuals and Communities: the Importance of Neighbors Volunteering

In this analysis, I examine the effects of community-level volunteering on an individual’s choices regarding time – whether to work and whether to volunteer. In order to better explain the decision to volunteer, a classic pure public goods structure is contrasted with a less restrictive impure public goods model that admits other possible private motivations. The results of this study undermine the neoclassical notion that volunteering can be understood solely as a pure public good that is provided less when others are seen to be contributing. In fact, individuals are found to be more, not less, likely to volunteer when others in their communities do so. An innovative instrumental variables strategy is used to account for reflection bias and the possible endogeneity caused by selective sorting of individuals into neighborhoods, which allows for a causal interpretation of these results. Employment regressions provide preliminary evidence that average volunteering relates, to some extent, with the decision of whether to participate in the labor force. Variations in the effect of average volunteering across age and gender are also explored. The present work is unique by virtue of its use of a large and representative dataset, along with rigorous statistical testing. I use United States Census 2000 Summary File 3 and Current Population Survey (CPS) 2004–2007 September Supplement file data and control for various individual and community-level characteristics.     

Volunteering in Retirement and Its Impact on Seniors Subjective Quality of Life Through Personal Outlook: A Study of Older Australians

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study examines the subjective quality of life of globally expanding senior citizens post-retirement, from a...     

The Limits of Monetizing and Paying for Volunteering in Eldercare: A Behavioral-Economic Approach

The monetary value of informal eldercare in the family and voluntary sector has drawn much attention as it concerns a resource of welfare governments and nonprofit organizations try to activate via cash benefits. Studies addressing the issue in order to assess the economic impact of non-market activities and the willingness to accept financial rewards have largely ignored differences in the utility function of caregivers. Applying a behavioral-economic approach, we report a profound and formerly unobserved distinction between care in the household and non-household care for a family member or in a voluntary framework: whereas caregivers within the household perceive care as a burden and a positive shadow price arises, in the non-household context—and particularly in the volunteering case–care extends well-being and leads to negative shadow prices. The results show that non-market activities can only be measured in monetary terms to a limited extent and contribute to explaining the boundaries of monetary incentive policies.     

Examining the Benefits of Intergenerational Volunteering in Long-Term Care: A Review of the Literature

This review examines the benefits of intergenerational interactions between youth volunteers and residents of long-term care homes. Five articles met the criteria for review. Benefits for youth included developing new communication and career-related skills, improved attitudes toward older adults, and the development of meaningful relationships and friendships. Benefits for residents were engagement in activities with the students, enhanced well-being and, for residents with aphasia, improved communication abilities. Further research is needed to evaluate the impact of intergenerational volunteer programs, especially for secondary students as volunteers.