Context and Community: Volunteering in Religious and Secular Situations

• In Event: 500 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Paper Session. Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity

Abstract

This paper explores the different meanings and predictors of volunteering in religious and secular organizations. We engage and extend previous literature by looking at both individual and community-level predictors of volunteering. Controlling for some important demographic factors, we explore the role of economic position, social identities and commitments, community contexts and social capital and community connections. We find that all have influence over whether individuals volunteer at all, but they differently predict whether people volunteer in religious settings only, non-religious settings only, or both. Not only do individual and contextual factors differently predict volunteering in religious and non-religious settings, both are different from volunteering in general.

Authors

• Joseph H. Gerteis, University of Minnesota

• Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota