Voluntary work in Europe - the influence of perceived financial security in the choice of volunteering

Abstract: The core of many modern societies can be described through exchanges of goods and services. These reciprocal actions are constantly increasing in frequency, and constitute a daily struggle for people with high demand on their time. In contrast to people's busy schedules, there is a popular trend to give away one's time by for example performing voluntary work. Previous research has even indicated that the ones choosing to volunteer tend to have a higher opportunity cost of time. It is therefore of great social and economic interest to further examine the characteristics of volunteers to better understand the benefits and costs associated with performing voluntary activities. By using a pooled cross-sectional dataset with two rounds from the European Social Survey, we aim to investigate if a higher perceived financial security has a positive impact on the probability of having performed voluntary work and to give further insights to the behaviour within voluntarism. With significant results, we find evidence that a stronger perceived financial situation is estimated to have a positive impact on the likeliness of having performed voluntary work.