The consistent effect of education on volunteering has been explained in a number of ways. In this study we test the hypothesis that perceived control beliefs are partly responsible. Using two waves of panel data from National Survey of Midlife in the United States we estimated cross-lagged structural equation models in which education is positioned as the exogenous variable and perceived contr...

Sustained engagement in volunteering and its correlates have been examined in many studies across the globe. However, there is a dearth of research that explores the perspectives of long-term formal volunteers on the nature of changes perceived in oneself as a result of volunteering. Moreover, the linkages between psychological well-being and volunteering have been insufficiently explored. The ...

Why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor’s opportunity cost? Previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot rationalize this behavior, despite its prevalence. We develop a model that relaxes this assumption, allowing for differential warm glow depending on the form of the donation. In a series of laboratory...

values of benevolence do not discriminate between help provided to strangers and help provided to kin and friends, or between organized help and casual help. We assume that people who define the good life as helping others will be more helpful. Given the wording of the question, we expect the relationship with helping will be stronger than the relationship with formal volunteering. We expect to...

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PALLIATIVE CARE, 2016; 23(4) The hospice movement, which is akin to a civil rights movement, is partly based on volunteer work.1 Hospice and palliative care (HPC) volunteers are active in almost every country in Europe, and many services depend on their contributions to deliver the range and quality of care they provide.2 The numbers of volunteers, the tasks they perform and...

Mental health or well-being provides individuals with an enhanced agentic capacity for formal volunteering. However, this capacity may be realized more effectively through the structural resources for volunteering provided by education. Analyzing white respondents from the 1995-2005 National Survey of Midlife Development Panel Study (N = 1,431), we examine the contingent effects of mental well-...

Even though volunteering has been a distinguishing feature of American society since its inception, scholars continue to struggle with how to accurately describe and measure it. Eleanor Brown’s The Scope of Volunteer Activity and Public Service and Helmut Anheier and Lester Salamon’s Volunteering in Cross-National Perspective: Initial Comparisons demonstrate that nonprofit scholars have yet to ...

To most people, a “volunteer” is someone who contributes time to helping others with no expectation of pay or other material benefit to herself. However, this does not mean that volunteer work is of no consequence for the volunteer. Indeed, it is widely believed that helping others is as beneficial for the donor as it is for the recipient. “Research studies show that most people do in fact hold...