Compulsory volunteers’ nostalgia and its relationships with positive memories, age, past experiences, and volunteer intention

Abstract

While nostalgia has been explored in various contexts, no research has so far investigated how individuals’ nostalgia can be generated by volunteer experiences in compulsory settings and how nostalgic feelings extend their future behavior. To fill this research gap, this study explored how nostalgia regarding compulsory volunteering is related to positive memories, age, and past experiences and how such nostalgia translates to volunteer intention. A total of 605 responses were collected from university students who had completed compulsory volunteering at sporting events and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results showed that positive memories contributed to all five factors of volunteer nostalgia, while past experiences only predicted volunteer environment , volunteer socialization , and volunteer personal identity . Age was not a significant antecedent to any of the volunteer nostalgia factors. Nostalgia regarding volunteer experience and volunteer personal identity mediated the relationship between positive memories and volunteer intention. This study confirmed previous claims concerning the relationships among nostalgia, positive memories, age, and past experiences in the context of compulsory volunteering. Specifically, individuals can develop nostalgia for coerced experiences if they have fond memories of them. Also, past experiences are more essential to nostalgia than age but not as much as positive memories, and nostalgia can turn compulsory volunteers into continued volunteers.

Volunteers’ growth mindset and continuance intention: what are the roles of nostalgia and positive emotions?

“…Intention to continue volunteering was measured using three items adapted from Hoye et al (2008). The scales used in this study showed reliability and validity in previous research (e.g., Crawford and Henry, 2004;Park and John, 2012;Cho and Joo, 2022), and the items are in the form of 7-point Likert scales, where participants indicate their level of agreement from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree. The wording of these items is listed in Table 1, and psychometric properties are reported in Table 2.…”

“…Additionally, in an occupational setting, Staw et al (1994) noted that employees who experienced positive emotions at work were more likely to engage in favorable work behaviors, allowing them to achieve their goals. More relevant to the present study's context, Aknin et al (2018) and Cho and Joo (2022) stressed that positive emotions from prosocial behaviors act as reinforcement and encourage individuals to continue engaging in prosocial behavior. Therefore, this study hypothesized that the intention to continue volunteering, a type of prosocial behavior, is influenced by the experience of positive emotions: H6: Volunteers' positive emotions positively affect intention to continue volunteering.…”