Applying the social cognitive perspective to volunteer intention in China: the mediating roles of self-efficacy and motivation

Abstract

When predicting volunteer intention, much attention is paid to the volunteer organization environment (VOE). Given that self-efficacy and motivation have emerged as important predictors of volunteer intention, we adopted a combination of ideas of Bandura's social cognitive theory and Ajzen's theory of planned behavior integrating VOE, self-efficacy and motivation to examine their effects on volunteer intention and to determine whether self-efficacy and motivation mediate the relationship between VOE and volunteer intention. The subjects of this study consisted of 198 community health volunteers in Shanghai city, China. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to identify the factor structure using standard principal component analysis. Six new factors were revealed, including two VOE factors, relation with organization and support from government; two motivation factors, personal attitude and social recognition; self-efficacy and volunteer intention. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis indicated that relation with organization accounted for 14.8% of the variance in volunteer intention, and support from government failed to add significantly to variance in volunteer intention; self-efficacy and personal attitude motivation partially mediated the effects of relation with organization on volunteer intention; social recognition motivation did not mediate the relationship between relation with organization and volunteer intention; and relation with organization, self-efficacy and personal attitude motivation accounted for 33.7% of the variance in volunteer intention. These results provide support for self-efficacy and personal attitude motivation as mediators and provide preliminary insight into the potential mechanisms for predicting volunteer intention and improving volunteering by integrating VOE, self-efficacy and motivation factors.

Personality, Job Resources, and Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Volunteer Engagement in Non-Governmental Organizations

“…This result goes in line with those from other studies concerning paid work settings (Laguna et al, 2017;Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007;Xanthopoulou et al, 2009). Our findings confirmed the prominent role of self-efficacy in volunteering, that was suggested by other study findings as well (Wang et al, 2010). Self-efficacy is considered to be one of the personal resources that help people to impact upon and successfully control their working environment (Bandura, 2009).…”

“…Volunteer self-efficacy is defined as the ability or confidence to do volunteering activities in various situations (Wang, Wei, Harada, Minamoto, Ueda, Cui, Zhang, Cui, Ueda, 2010). It turned out to be related to volunteers' actions direction, their effort put in performance, as well as how and for how long they will persevere in the face of an adversity (Wang et al, 2010). The stronger the volunteers' self-efficacy, the stronger is their intention to complete a behavior and to achieve goals.…”

Development of a community’s self-efficacy scale for preventing social isolation among community-dwelling older people (Mimamori Scale)

“…The results also demonstrated that the CSES could discriminate between the groups; that is, the scores of all the CSES factors and sub-scales in the CVOL group were higher than those in the GEN group (Table 4). This finding is also consistent with outcomes that volunteers have advantages over other citizens in terms of physical activity [42], mental health [43], self-rated health [44], and general self-efficacy [31]. …”

“…Second, the community’s beliefs about its capacity for achievement are a primary indicator of its potential ability to prevent social isolation of older people. Members of the general population are expected to be the primary resource for prevention, while community volunteers are expected to promote prevention in a variety of community health networks and organizations [31]. …”

Understanding the motivation and performance of community health volunteers involved in the delivery of health programmes in Kampala, Uganda: a realist evaluation protocol

“…More specifically, authors reported the need for further research on volunteers’ intentions and how or why people become and stay a volunteer. 16 Indeed, we know relatively little about how volunteers perceive job satisfaction, about their long-term engagement and about how this can be improved. 17 …”