Moral foundations and volunteers’ trust towards institutions and organizations during social crises: evidence from Poland and Italy

• In Event: The voluntary initiatives in support of migrants in times of crisis: mutual aid, self-mobilization and cross-sectional solidarity

Abstract

Volunteers collaborating with various established or spontaneously formed organizations mitigate the adverse consequences of crises (Carlsen et al., 2021). Trust among volunteers towards these organizations seems crucial so that they intend to engage in helping. The paper aims to provide insight into the volunteers' trust towards different types of institutions/organizations: the government, public institutions (schools, hospitals), nongovernmental organizations, and self-help groups, in the case of social crises: a pandemic and a refugee crisis.
The level of trust may depend on the moral foundations endorsed by the volunteers (Pagliaro et al., 2021). Moral foundations are the moral categories they unconsciously refer to when making decisions (Graham et al., 2009). We also check whether the type of current volunteer participation (formal or informal) contributes to the level of trust, as informal volunteering seems crucial during social crises and emergencies (Nahkur et al., 2022; Simsa et al., 2019; Whittaker et al., 2015).
Moral foundations capture what a person values in society – care for other individuals (individualizing values: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity) or care for one's group (binding values: Authority/Respect, Ingroup/Loyalty, Purity/Sanctity; Graham et al., 2009). People preferring the individualizing values of harm avoidance and fairness can be inclined towards seeking ways to relieve other individuals' difficulties. Thus, they may trust organizations that rely on personalized care for others, whereas people preferring the binding values may be simply interested in seeking coalitions with others (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2021), thus, could trust established institutions/organizations over the ones that rely on self-organization and flexibility (such as self-help groups).
The material to be presented is based on two online, questionnaire-based studies: one on a sample of Polish (N = 287) and one on a sample of Italian (N = 231) volunteers. The countries have been chosen given the similar yet distinct experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic (Senni, 2020; Nowakowska, 2023) and the refugee crisis (Pinelli, 2018; Zabłocka-Żytka & Lavdas, 2023).
The results of linear regression models indicated the role of Harm/Care and Ingroup/Loyalty concerns in trusting institutions during the pandemic, with differences across organizations and countries. For the refugee crisis, in the case of Poland, Authority/Respect was associated with trust in the government and Harm/Care was related to trust toward other organizations. In the case of Italy, Ingroup/Loyalty related to trust in all investigated organizations. Only for Poles, experience with informal volunteering related to lower trust in nongovernmental organizations during a pandemic and self-help groups emergent in refugee crises.
The results show us the potential intercultural differences between Poland and Italy regarding how moral concerns may relate to the volunteers' trust in various organizations, which can further affect their willingness to engage in their volunteering programs. For scholars, the results expand the knowledge about the link between moral foundations and prosocial engagement. For practitioners, it may show routes for advertising volunteering opportunities, especially considering the ingroup or harm avoidance concerns, depending on the scope of the potential volunteers' activities.

References

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Authors

• Iwona Nowakowska

• Maura Pozzi, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart