six - Why people volunteer: contextualising motivation

Summary

Introduction: challenges of obtaining accounts of volunteer motivation

Why do people volunteer? Although scholars have advanced a diverse range of accounts of motivation, which we have summarised in Chapter One, significant obstacles stand in the way of gathering data on volunteer motivation which relate to temporality and motive. It is unusual, if not impossible, to be in a position to capture individuals’ views on motivation while they are in the process of choosing to volunteer. Consideration of motives will usually be retrospective; however, as Musick and Wilson (2008) have identified, the problem with seeking information about the underlying motives for volunteering is that:

if they preceded the volunteering act…[the] actual experience of volunteering often leads to such radical changes in attitudes toward the activity that the original goals are forgotten or the volunteer becomes unable to separate her initial reasons for volunteering from the reasons that make sense to her now. (p 71)

Respondents are also likely to conflate their motives for volunteering with more recently acquired views on the actual benefits that their experience of volunteering has brought either to them or to the beneficiaries of their volunteering. Retrospective discussion of motives is also likely to confuse motives with broader attitudinal views. Furthermore, motives overlap with triggers and influences: volunteering may result from the presentation of an opportunity (for example, to someone seeking a move back into employment after a career break). This could be regarded as a trigger, but is then rationalised by the respondent as a motive. Moreover, motive is not just related to the decision as to whether to volunteer or not, it is also related to the decision on where to volunteer, and what role to take. Given that over the lifecourse an individual may volunteer multiple times, each separate decision to volunteer will involve consideration of whether, where and how to volunteer.

Events that take place after an individual has volunteered may influence or reshape recall of motive, particularly when strong emotions are attached to the memories of these events (Lindsey, 2004; Bal, 1999; Portelli, 1998). Quality of recall can also be affected by over-rehearsal of certain autobiographical memories that are privileged over others (Talarico and Rubin, 2003).