The unpaid labor of volunteers requires an explanation for its motivation. Three theories of volunteer reward are examined: leisure, investment, and a perceived link between volunteer behavior and subsequent outcomes. Volunteers at a crisis intervention center were surveyed, and a set of patterns of volunteer motivation was identified. Implications are drawn for volunteer-employing organizations and public policy.Volunteer labor represents an important resource in the American economy. Although data are scarce, estimates by Weisbrod (1982) suggest that the amount of volunteer time given in 1973 was equal in hours to roughly 20 percent of the paid employment in nonprofit organizations. Clotfelter (1985) estimates that the value of time devoted to volunteer activities is probably as large as the aggregate level of monetary giving to not-forprofit causes. While much volunteer work requires little in the way of specialized skills, some volunteer positions require extensive training and can carry with them levels of stress and responsibility typical of remunerative jobs. Agencies that invest in developing volunteers' skills face obvious costs when turnover rates within the volunteer pool are high. Such agencies must depend on nonmonetary rewards to retain members of their volunteer work force. This paper uses a small but rich data set to explore the unpaid labor supply behavior of one group of highly trained volunteers. The data have been extracted from a survey designed to detect possible motives for volunteering, such as leisure value from socializing and investment in valuable skills (&dquo;human capital&dquo;). Our research questions deal with the hypothesis that volunteer time is analogous to monetary giving and that it is motivated principally by a desire to see some worthwhile activity undertaken. If this hypothesis is correct, a rational volunteer should prefer to support a given activity with the combination of time and money that is least costly to the volunteer. For example, if an activity can be

The incremental effects of stress-related variables on adaptation to a new work setting were compared after 4 and 8 mo. Adaptation to the new work setting was assessed by job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Baseline predictor variables were shift, mode of entry (individual or group), job variety, and level of skills used by the organization. Stress-related predictor variables were role conflict, role ambiguity, and perceived symptoms of stress. Subjects were 80 employees at a new manufacturing facility. Comparative analysis indicated that role conflict was a significant factor in the prediction of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion; symptoms of stress influenced emotional exhaustion. Role ambiguity was a poor predictor of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion.

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Differences in subjects who remained with or dropped out of a research project were evaluated using discriminant analyses. Subjects were 79 factory employees who received ten different questionnaires measuring perceptions and attitudes during a 22 month research period. Attrition was not predicted by any of the eight personality variables. Situational variables significantly predicted attrition; subjects who completed all questionnaires were more likely to have been assigned to one set of sister teams, to have been socialized into the organization by group/formal methods, and to have been initially assigned to the night shift. Discriminant analysis is a statistical tool to determine some of the bias of longitudinal data.