interesting study

A Cross-Cultural Study
of Explicit and Implicit
Motivation for Long-Term
Volunteering
Arzu Aydinli1,2, Michael Bender1, Athanasios Chasiotis1,
Fons J. R. van de Vijver1,3,4, Zeynep Cemalcilar2,
Alice Chong5, and Xiaodong Yue5
Abstract
We propose a model of volunteering and test its validity across four cultural
groups. We hypothesize that individuals’ explicit prosocial motivation relates
positively to sustained volunteering, which is conceptualized as a latent factor
comprising activity as a volunteer, service length, service frequency, and hours
of volunteering. Moreover, we introduced implicit prosocial motivation and
hypothesized that the relationship between explicit prosocial motivation and
sustained volunteering would be amplified by implicit prosocial motivation. Data
were collected from samples in China, Germany, Turkey, and the United States.
Results confirmed our expectation that, across cultures, sustained volunteering
was associated with explicit prosocial motivation and that the relationship
between explicit prosocial motivation and sustained volunteering was strongest
when implicit prosocial motivation was also high. By including implicit prosocial
motivation, our study offers a novel approach to identifying sustained volunteer
involvement, which can be of particular relevance for recruitment activities of
voluntary organizations across various cultural contexts.