To volunteer or not to volunteer? A cross-country study of volunteering

Abstract

This paper uses data from the 4th wave of the European Values Survey (EVS) to inves- tigate the factors that in uence the decision to participate in volunteering activities, con- sidering both volunteering in general as well as volunteering in particular types of activities. Like previous studies we include several socioeconomic and demographic variables. However our study also includes attitudinal variables and country dummy variables that capture the impact of country speci c factors. Our results show that there are signi cant di¤erences across countries in the propensity for volunteering and that the determinants of volunteering are quite di¤erent for the various types of volunteering.