Voluntary Work in Europe: Comparative Analysis Among Countries and Welfare Systems

The main contribution of this paper to the research of volunteering participation is considering simultaneously different levels of data aggregation: individual, country and welfare regimen. This strategy allows us identifying individual factors (socio-demographic variables) and contextual data (government expenditures on social issues and GDP), as well as comparing different political backgrounds (welfare systems). Our results suggest that socio-demographic characteristics and contextual data are important predictors of volunteer rates. Macro-policies might be effective tools to promote national volunteering participation, because international differences on volunteer rates smooth with the introduction of national contextual data.