Determinants of Voluntary Association Participation and Volunteering: a Literature Review

Determinants of Voluntary Association Participation and Volunteering: A Literature Review David Hortoti Smith This article reviews the Attietican literature in social sciencefor the period 1975-1992 011 the detenuinalits ofvoliuiteer participatioii in prograiiis atid msociatioiis. It finds that i~ioststiidies arc too tiarro~vin the \zitids ofvaii- ables that they include and that qhnatoiypower is rediiced (1s a result. Such participatioii is sigriifcaritly greaterfor certaiii kinds of variables: cotitaxtiin1 (for exanipfe, siiiallcr coniniunity), social backgtaitnd (for exaniple, liiglier education), persoiiality (for ample, 111oi-eefficacyliriter- nal locus of control), arid attitde (for exaittple, niore groitp attractiveness) as well as sitiiational variables (for example, being ashed to join). Very few stitdies conibiiie nieasures ofcach type of variable. \Vhen several pre- dictor rcalr~isarc iticltided, tnuch higher variance is accountedfol: Other social participation (political, iiims incdia, recreational, aiid so 011) is asso- ciatcd with volunteer participation. This associatioil coilfit7iis a gettern1 activity mdel that posits a cliisteririg of different types ofsociocitlturally approved discretioiiary activity. The determinants of participation in voluntary associations have been of inter- est to sociologists and other social scientists for many decades (for example, Warner and Lunt, 1941). Such participation has an impact on the participant (Smith and Reddy, 1973) and on the larger society (Smith, 1973). From time to time, literature reviews have been done on the determinants of association participation (for example, Smith, 1975; Smith and Freedman, 1972; Tomeh, 1973). Enough years have passed to make worthwhile a review drawing on recent bibliographies (Layton, 1987; Pugliese, 1985) and the Citizen Partici- pation and Voluntary Action Abstracts published by the Association for Note: 1 am grateful to anonymous referees and particularly the editor-in-chief for consttuc- tiw criticisms that have helped to make this a stronger article. Remaining errors are my o\\.n. NoSPRoriT AmVOLUSTARY SECTOR QUARTERLY, vol. 23, no. 3, Fall 1991 0 Jossey-Bass Publlshers 243 Downloaded from nvs.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on August 4, 2016 244 Smith Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. The period cov- ered is roughly that from 1975 to 1992, and attention is given almost exclu- sively to American periodical materials. The subfield of inquiry reviewed here seeks to understand why people participate in volunteer programs and voluntary associations. The least ambitious way to approach the relevant results is to say that we seek the correlates of such participation. More ambitious is the terminology of determinants adopted here, which implies some causality in the data. Still more ambitious would be an attempt to construct a path model. Such an enterprise seems far beyond the current literature, and it is not attempted here. This review considers not only participation in voluntary associations but also volunteer work for nonprofit programs and organizations. I refer to the two together as volunteer participation. They seem qualitatively similar, and they have similar patterns of determinants when we examine social background variables in national sample surveys (Auslander and Litwin, 1988; Hodgkinson, Weitzman, Noga, and Gorski, 1992; Hodgkinson and Weitzrnan, 1986; Palisi and Korn, 1989; Vaillancourt and Payette, 1986). Both involve contributions of time hthout coercion or remuneration. However, volunteer work is generally public benefit activity, while association participation can be either public benefit or member benefit activity (Smith, 1993). The findings of past literature reviews just cited suggest that the determinants of volunteer participation are highly multivariate. To grasp the com- plexity involved, it is helpful to have some theoretical model that pulls the hypothesized determinants together in a meaningful way. One aim of this review is to present generalizations that might be useful to a scholar in this subfield of nonprofidvoluntary action research. Another aim is to inform lead- ers of volunteer programs and voluntary associations about findings that could be put to use in efforts to mobilize volunteers and members. This review is organized around five categories of determinants found in the literature (based partly on Allport, 1954, partly on Smith, Macaulay, and Associates, 1980). Subtheories drawn from such disciplines and subfields as community theory, organization theory, personality theory, dominant status theory, role theory atti- tude theory, cognitive theory, and symbolic interaction theory underlie the determinants used in this review. Constraints of space prevent me from elab- orating on these relationships. These are the variable categories: Context refers to the environment of the individual, such as size of his or her community of residence and nature of the voluntary organization or group. Social background refers to standard social statuses and roles of importance, such as education and gender. Personality refers to general and enduring personal response tendencies, such as extra- version and assertiveness. Attitudes refers to more situation-specific response tendencies, such as liking volunteer work or a specific voluntary association. Finally, situatio-n refers to factors in one's immediate situation, such as being asked to join a group or program or one's definition of the situation. Downloaded from nvs.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on August 4, 2016 Voliiiitaiy Associatioii Pnrticipatioii aiid Voliiiiteeriiig 245 According to one underlying theory (Smith, 19831, the five categories of variables operate in concert, although most researchers in the period under review looked at only one or two categories of variables. Berger (1991) is an exception. After reviewing the various major types of variables, I will examine how the variables test some models in a brief section. Contextual Variables Contextual variables are factors that characterize the environment of an individual. The purpose of this section of the review is to see whether context has an independent impact on volunteer participation in the review period. This is where community and regional influences, as well as organizational influences, come into play. Ideally, context should be measured independently of the individual (that is, not as an individual’s self-report), but sometimes valid contextual variables are from self-reports. Context has various subcategories. The two most salient here are territory and organizations. Perhaps the classic study of territory is by Bell and Force (19561, who found higher volunteer participation in higher-economic-status San Francisco neighborhoods when individual socioeconomic status (education, occupation, income) was controlled. Their study suggests that at least one contextual variable helps to shape individual volunteer participation with the individual-level variables controlled. An important cross-cultural study by Curtis, Grabb, and Baer (1992) that used combined data for fifteen industrialized nations showed more participation in voluntary associations in smaller, more rural communities. This is very convincing, although the country sample may have masked country variations. Sundeen (1992) found a similar result for volunteer program participation in a U.S. national sample (see also Sundeen and Siegel, 1987). These kinds of studies speak to the importance of community characteristics in volunteer participation. Large, urban places seem to be less receptive to volunteer participation, all other things being equal. State (Berger, 1991) and regional (Vaillancourt and Payette, 1986; Stump, 1986) effects on volunteer participation have also been found in national samples. The contextual variable of organizational type involves measures of the organization in which participation takes place or in some cases of the organization in which the subject works as a full-time job. One good example is Hougland and Shepard’s (1985) study of a national sample of middle managers, which found that they were more likely to participate in voluntary associations when they worked in a larger business (measured by logarithm of size). Other data in the study suggest that the reason for this is that larger corporations are more likely to have a subculture of community service that encourages managers to participate in voluntary associations. Such corporate subcultures of community service should be studied more directly and extensively Focusing more directly on the organization in which individuals participate as volunteers, Foss (1983) found blood donation higher in a university Downloaded from nvs.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on August 4, 2016 that had generally positive attitudes toward volunteer participation than in a university where attitudes were less positive. But other characteristics of organizations have also been found to encourage volunteer participation. Betz and Judkins (1975) found more selective attraction and socialization in a voluntary group where there was more goal clarity and change orientation. Morris and Snyder (1983) found more union membership in twelve human service agencies where organizational efficiency was lower, size controlled. Clearly, the characteristics of the organization volunteered for or belonged to affect participation. There are many important differences in organizations that have not been examined carefully

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