Hop in or Drop Out. An Event History Analysis on Starting and Quitting Volunteering for Humanitarian Organizations

• In Event: Retaining Volunteers

Abstract

In an era of mass migration and forced displacement (e.g. Della Porta, 2018), humanitarian organizations find themselves as a key actor in the midst of several crises. However, humanitarian organizations, while facing difficulties with recruiting and retaining volunteers (Koolen-Maas et al., 2023; Warburton et al., 2018), rely to a large extent on volunteers for giving aid to, for instance, refugees. These volunteers have the potential to occupy important positions in society. They are the first, and often most-trusted (e.g. Landmann et al., 2023) representatives of the host society through the newcomers’ lens and, vice versa, are seen as people who first connect with newcomers in society through the host society representatives’ eyes.
Prior studies have examined longitudinal trends in volunteering for humanitarian organizations in the Netherlands (Meijeren et al., 2023b), and assessed demographic characteristics of these volunteers (Meijeren et al., 2023a). What lacks, however, is research that addresses the question “to what extent changes in the life courses of individuals affect the likelihood to start or stop volunteering for humanitarian organizations”. Using Dutch panel data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel, that comprises the period 2008-2022, we aim to test whether changes in primary occupation, income level, subjective health and informal social interactions that occur within the lives of respondents lead to changes in the likelihood to start or stop volunteering for humanitarian organizations. We apply a quantitative approach, and use between and within modelling to account for fixed and random effects.
In doing so, we aim to shed light on why certain life course transitions foster starting humanitarian voluntary episodes, and why other transitions foster ending humanitarian voluntary careers. Moreover, this paper expands knowledge with regard to civil society organizations who are engaged in refugee protection, which is crucial as “less research exists about civil society activities, social movements and organizations related to refugee protection” (Pries, 2019, p.3).
We consider two main theories that we deem relevant. First, role substitution theory (Lancee & Radl, 2014) refers to a trade-off between various productive activities, such as volunteering. When this trade-off is imbalanced, it is argued that individuals who are faced with too many demands on their time, may experience stress or conflicts that ultimately may limit volunteering. As individuals take up a new role in life (e.g. starting to work), the likelihood of quitting volunteering increases. Vice versa, as roles are dropped (e.g. entering retirement) the likelihood of starting volunteering rises. Second, the resource perspective (Wilson & Musick, 1997, 1998) emphasizes that volunteering is a demanding activity that not everyone is prepared for. Similar to paid work, voluntary work requires resources. Thus, large stocks of human and / or social capital make it easier to meet the demands of voluntary work. The resource perspective therefore predicts changes in volunteering behavior over people’s lifetime to the extent that their biographical trajectory affects their capacity to engage in volunteering.

References

Della Porta, D. (Ed.). (2018). Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Contentious Moves. Palgrave.
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Authors

• Maikel Meijeren, Radboud University Nijmegen

• Rene Bekkers, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam