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Available online at www.sciencedirect.comJournal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008) 314–335
www.elsevier.com/locate/joep
On the relational motive for volunteer work
Lionel Prouteau a, François-Charles Wolff a,b,*
a
LEN, Department of Economics, Université de Nantes, BP 52231 Chemin de la Censive du Tertre,
44322 Nantes Cedex 3, France
b
CNAV and INED, Paris, France
Received 7 April 2006; received in revised form 2 July 2007; accepted 2 August 2007
Available online 14 August 2007
Abstract
While economists have mainly focused on investment or altruistic motives to explain why people
undertake volunteer activities, we rely instead in this paper on the relational motive previously
emphasized by social psychologists. Volunteering is seen as a way to build friendly relationships.
Drawing on the French survey Vie Associative conducted by INSEE in 2002 on volunteer work
and association membership, we shed light on the relevance of this relational motive using two sam-
ples of, respectively, 1578 volunteers and 2631 participants in associations. According to their own
statements, many volunteers seek to make friends and to meet other people through these activities.
Econometric results show that working as a volunteer in an association has a causal impact on the
probability of making friends in that association, which also supports the relational motive.
Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
JEL classification: L31; Z13
PsycINFO classification: 2910; 3020
Keywords: Volunteering; Motivations; Relational goods
*
Corresponding author. Address: LEN, Department of Economics, Université de Nantes, BP 52231 Chemin de
la Censive du Tertre, 44322 Nantes Cedex 3, France. Tel.: +33 240141779.
E-mail addresses: lionel.prouteau@univ-nantes.fr (L. Prouteau), wolff@sc-eco.univ-nantes.fr (F.-C. Wolff).
URLs: http://www.univ-nantes.fr/prouteau-l (L. Prouteau), http://www.sc-eco.univ-nantes.fr/~fcwolff (F.-C.
Wolff).
0167-4870/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.joep.2007.08.001
, L. Prouteau, F.-C. Wolff / Journal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008) 314–335 315
1. Introduction
Volunteer work is an important resource for many nonprofit organizations. As part of
the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, information on volunteering
from 24 countries shows that the financial value of this unpaid input represents on average
a contribution which is twice as high as the amount of cash donations (Salamon & Soko-
lowski, 2001). In France, the volume of formal volunteer work is estimated at 820,000 full
time equivalent jobs in 2002, i.e. 3.3% of French total employment or 3.8% of wage-earn-
ing employment (Prouteau & Wolff, 2004c). Its imputed monetary value ranges from 0.8%
to 1.1% of GDP, depending on the valuation method. Furthermore, associations attract
around 90% of these gifts of time, the remaining 10% being distributed among other pri-
vate or public organizations. French associations, which are required by law to be man-
aged by boards of volunteers, represent the bulk of the nonprofit sector.
Given the role and importance of volunteering as a productive resource, it attracts the
attention of economists (Menchik & Weisbrod, 1987), even if they have generally shown a
greater interest in studying financial donations. Because volunteer work has a zero explicit
money wage, it may be puzzling for economists who are inclined to think that all actions
have a material quid pro quo. Hence, economists are induced to investigate the goals and
the motivations of volunteers. At the same time, the motivations which are visible with
volunteer work are very probably present even in paid work. The question is hence of
importance.
Even though the reasons for volunteering ‘‘do not have the comfort of an easy answer’’
(Pearce, 1993, p. 59), it is necessary to scrutinize them to predict the response of contrib-
utors to a modification of their economic environment or to a change of government pol-
icy (Menchik & Weisbrod, 1987, p. 160). For instance, the voluntary effort of an individual
will not be affected in the same way by an increased effort of other individuals or by a rise
in government expenditures for the same cause depending on whether the time gift is
intended for a public good or for private benefit. In the first case, the donor may be
induced to reduce his contribution since gifts from others and government expenditures
are considered by the donor as substitutes. This is the so-called ‘‘crowding out’’ effect, fur-
ther described in Menchik and Weisbrod (1987), Schiff (1990) and Day and Devlin (1996).
In the second case, the individual’s gift needs not be affected in the same way by the same
events. It may even be stimulated (‘‘crowding in’’ effect).
Knowing the motives for volunteering is also very important to nonprofit management.
Volunteer administrators have to promote the volunteers’ success in meeting their motiva-
tional needs. In order to achieve this result, nonprofit management must in particular
strive to match volunteers with jobs which satisfy their goals (Ellis, 1991). To fulfill the
volunteers’ expectations is the best means to attract and to retain them in the organization,
and consequently to minimize the turnover of the unremunerated workforce (Brudney,
1990; Clary et al., 1998; Rubin & Thorelli, 1984; Tschirhart, Mesch, Perry, Miller, &
Lee, 2001).
While economic models of volunteering suggest several possible motives for giving time,
they remain surprisingly silent concerning the sociability dimension of this behavior. This
is rather puzzling as economists take a growing interest in the embeddedness of economic
activity in social settings (Granovetter, 1985). As shown in Jackson (2007), there are many
economic interactions in which the social context is a primary driver of outcomes and
social networks play a prominent role in labor markets, education or criminal activity
, 316 L. Prouteau, F.-C. Wolff / Journal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008) 314–335
among others. Economists have then to better study the link between human interactions
and volunteering, with the view to better understand the motivations to volunteer (to help
for instance organizations to better recruit volunteers) and the importance of social capital
on social contributions.
Most nonprofit organizations are propitious to such human contacts. A volunteer
worker is expected to meet both other volunteers, employees and also recipients of the pro-
posed services, at least in associations which do not limit their activities to pursuing the
interests of their members, but are community oriented and provide services to ‘‘custom-
ers’’. This explains why Ben-Ner (2002) claims that such nonprofit organizations encour-
age the production of relational goods. Following the definition of Gui (2000), these goods
may be seen as intangible outputs of a communicative and affective nature, produced
through interactions.
The importance given by volunteers to the relational dimension of such activities has
been evidenced in several data sets. Drawing on the 1997 National Survey of Volunteering
carried out in Great Britain for the Volunteer Centre UK, Davis Smith (1998) argues that
‘‘meeting people and making friends through volunteering’’ is a very important benefit of
this kind of involvement. Among 12 different justifications suggested to respondents, the
relational motive was the third most important one. The first justification was the deriving
pleasure from volunteering and the second one was that of seeing the results of one’s work.
The purpose of our contribution is to further investigate the relevance of the relational
motive for volunteering. We ask ourselves whether this motive is an appropriate explana-
tion for the involvement decision of a significant portion of volunteer workers. Our anal-
ysis is mainly empirical, based on a representative French national survey which compiled
a wide range of information about formal volunteering and includes self-reported motives
by respondents for contributing time. We also draw on simultaneous equation models to
evidence causal effects between volunteer work and relational output.
2. Motives for volunteering: A review
At least two reasons induce economists to study the motivations for volunteering. First,
since by definition the aim of these activities cannot be a direct financial reward, it is nec-
essary to consider what benefits accrue to volunteers, so that their behavior may be
demonstrably consistent with the rational choice paradigm. Second, because individuals
may support associations by using different types of contributions, researchers have to
understand why such individuals choose to do volunteer work rather than to give money.
Differences between the various economic models of volunteering lie in what is consid-
ered to motivate volunteer work. Broadly, three main models may be distinguished (Schiff,
1990). First, the investment model hypothesizes that volunteers want to enhance their
human capital in order to improve their employability or to increase their future earnings
(Day & Devlin, 1998; Menchik & Weisbrod, 1987; Mueller, 1975; Schiff, 1990). In the
same vein, volunteering may be seen as a means to broaden the social network of individ-
uals to help them to further their own goals, in particular their professional ones. For
instance, volunteers may acquire detailed information on the existence and characteristics
of vacant jobs. Human relations are considered here only as a mean to achieve one’s aim
and to yield economic benefits, not as goals pursued for themselves.
Second, time transfers may result from the desire to increase an output which presents
some characteristics of a public good (Duncan, 1999; Schiff, 1990). In this case, the output
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