Why Do People Volunteer ?
Relatively little statistical research has been done on the factors that influence people’s participation in volunteer activities. Most of the recent information is descriptive in nature: who volunteers, how much time is spent, and the types of organizations for which they volunteer.
An economist’s view of people’s participation in volunteer activities begins by considering individuals within a family setting. All families— regardless of size or composition—have household obligations to meet, such as providing for food and clothes. The question is—when and why do family mem¬bers engage in activities that are unpaid and benefit people outside the fami¬ly? To answer this question it is necessary first to understand how families behave in meeting their primary obligations.
Families have to decide how to divide their time between working and leisure. Some time must be spent working in the home, producing goods and services for the family (such as a clean house or child care). Another part of family members’ time must be spent in the job market to earn income to buy household necessities. This income earned from work in the job market may also be used to support a family member who works full-or part-time in the home and to enable the family to engage in leisure activities such as a vacation or early retirement.
Work usually has some unpleasant aspects to it. For people to be willing to undertake these unpleasant tasks, they must be compensated in some fashion. The compensation for work in the home is the goods and services produced that can then are enjoyed. Earnings are the compensation for working in the job market.
The way families divide their time depends upon the particular combination of goods bought in the market, goods produced at home, and leisure that gives the family the greatest satisfaction. A maximum, rather than limitless, amount of satisfaction is reasonable because the amount of time available for any particular activity is limited to 24 hours per day.
This treats volunteerism as another way that family members may spend their time. This means that we must find the circumstances under which families will divide up their time among four activities. But first, volun¬teerism has several characteristics that are important to note:
Volunteering time is’ a form of work. It is unpaid and done outside both the hone and the job market. While it might be argued that volunteering is a leisure activity, unlike a purely recreational activity, people may experience dissatisfaction from some aspects of their volunteer activities. For example, going door-to-door collecting for a community drive is hot always enjoyable.
Volunteering differs from other types of work in that the goods and services produced may benefit people outside the household. In some cases, such as helping with a child’s activities, household member may receive benefits from the volunteer work.
As with other forms of work, people must be compensated for participating in volunteer activities. This compensation may take several, not mutually exclusive, forms:
Personal satisfaction may be a person’s compensation for volunteering. This satisfaction may be “a feeling of virtue,” meeting new people, interacting socially, “feeling productive,” or “keeping busy.”
The increased well-being of a family member may be the volunteer’s compensation, which makes this case similar to work done in the home to produce goods and services for the family to enjoy.
Making people outside the family better off may be the compensation for volunteering. Of the three motivations for volunteering, this is the least tangible and is the closest approximation to pure altruism.
It is hypothesized here that volunteerism assumes a small role in a family’s life when the benefits accrue only to people outside the household.
In these situations, families are unlikely to reduce their income, home-produced goods, or leisure time by a substantial amount in order to volunteer. That time which is devoted to volunteer activities would come largely from time otherwise devoted to leisure.
However, if at least some of the benefits accrue to family members (including the volunteer), then it is ejected that the decision to volunteer assumes greater importance. In this case, volunteer work is analogous to pro¬ducing goods and services within the home for the enjoyment of family members. A family may be willing to trade off less work (income) in the job market or in the home for more of the benefits obtained from volunteerism.