Who volunteers in Serbia? Motives and value orientations of Serbian volunteers

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on individual factors that influence on people t o engage in formal volunteering, providing empirical evidence from Serbia. We discussed Batson?s four-motive theory of communal actions. The majority of Serbian volunteers reportedly dedicated their time in order to contribute to the community and to help people in need. Thus, they were driven by collectivism and altruism. The lack of time, lack of solicitation for volunteering and being unable to make long-term commitments were reported as the main barriers to volunteering. Serbian volunteers rarely obtain material and non-material benefits from volunteering, and they do not perceive volunteering as a valuable tool for job success. Then, we focused on Schwartz value theory and its potential to explain pro-social behaviour. Our findings based on descriptive statistics and the independent samples t test show that self-transcendence values are more important for Serbian volunteers than self-enhancement values, and that self-transcendence values are more emphasized among volunteers than among non-volunteers. However, we also found that on average volunteers score higher on self-enhancement value orientation than nonvolunteers. Our findings, based on multiple regression models, cannot confirm that, controlled for other factors, volunteers and non-volunteers have different value orientations. Finally, according to the logistic regression models, Serbian volunteers are more likely to be found among younger, better-educated population, with higher scores on the scale of self-transcendence value orientations.