Determinants of Volunteer Motives and Future Behavior in Community Sporting Events

The motives of volunteers provide an important key to understanding an individual's decision to become involved in volunteering (Kim, Zhang, & Connaughton, 2010). One challenge sporting event managers face is that community sport organizations in particular have suffered from a lack of volunteers (Cuskelly, 2004). To date, scholars have focused their research efforts to study the motivation and retention of volunteers for mega-sporting events. Previous researchers, however, suggested that individuals volunteering with mega sporting events may demonstrate different motivations and behaviors compared to those volunteering in other settings such as community sport. Therefore, attention should be given to assess whether the motives of those volunteering to work at community sporting events differ from motives to volunteer at mega sporting events. In spite of the observed differences between community and mega sporting events, there has been little effort to compare volunteer motivations for the different types of sporting events. Kim et al. (2010) started their research based on the perspective that different motives may drive volunteers to work in different sport settings, an approach that is similar to the proposed research. Even though Kim et al. (2010) studied volunteers working with community sport events, (e.g., youth community sports), a majority of participants in their study were parents who had children participating in sport programs. While youth sports are considered a facet of community sports, the proposed research focused on volunteers at community sporting events that were primarily adult oriented other than youth sports oriented. The purpose of this study was to: (a) identify the motives that are most and least important to those who volunteer with community sporting events, and (b) assess whether the particular motives influence intention to continue volunteering in the future. The results from this study provide community sport organizers with information as to why people volunteer to work with community sporting events, and how to retain them. The results from this study may be used by administrators in community sport organizations to develop policies to aid recruitment and retention of volunteers. To achieve the goals of proposed study, participants who were currently involved in volunteering activities, or had volunteer experiences with community sporting events (e.g., community tennis tournaments, road races, and soccer leagues, etc.) were recruited. I collected data via both e-mail and face-to-face. To analyze the data, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using Mplus was used to assess the hypothesized relationships between volunteer motivation and intention to continue volunteering. I concluded from the results that Value was the most important motive for volunteering. The remaining factors, in order of importance for volunteering were Social, Career, Enhancement, and Protective. In terms of intention to continue volunteering in general, Protective and Career had significant and negative relationships, while Social and Enhancement had significant and positive influences on overall intention to continue volunteering. Protective had a significant and negative relationship on intention to continue volunteering relative to the influence by family or friends. Enhancement had a significant and positive influence on intention to continue volunteering relative to the influence by family or friends. Social and Career did not have a significant influence on intention to continue volunteering relative to the influence by family or friends.