Motivations of German Hospice Volunteers

Abstract

We examined reasons of volunteering for hospice and nonhospice organizations in a study with 125 volunteers (22-93 years) from the United States and Germany. Motives of US and German hospice volunteers revealed similarities and few differences. Hospice volunteers are involved because they seek to help others, seek new learning experiences, seek social contacts, or seek personal growth. The US hospice volunteers reported motives related to altruistic concerns, enhancement, and social influence as more influential, while German hospice volunteers rated career expectations as being more important. Comparison of German hospice with nonhospice volunteers revealed stronger differences: German hospice volunteers scored higher on altruistic motives, while German nonhospice volunteers yielded higher scores on self-serving motives. Findings contribute to improved understanding of volunteering motivation and of activating or retaining hospice volunteers.

The supply side of volunteering in Austrian hospice services: determinants of sustainable voluntary engagement

“…In line with previous literature (e.g., Addington-Hall and Karlsen 2005; ClaxtonOldfield and Banzen 2010; Claxton-Oldfield and ClaxtonOldfield 2007; Morris et al 2012;Garbay et al 2014;Stelzer and Lang 2014), we find that the typical hospice volunteer in our sample is female (200 out of 223), married (164 out of 223), older than 56 years (116 out of 223) and is retired (101 out of 223). 1 These similarities in individual characteristics suggest that our sample of respondents is representative for the group of hospice volunteers at a national and international level as well.…”

“…We are aware that our results only hold for a selected sample, namely volunteers in hospice services. According to previous literature (e.g., Morris et al 2012;Stelzer and Lang 2014), hospice volunteers differ significantly in their individual characteristics and motives from volunteers in general. This implies that the findings regarding the promoting factors for voluntary labour supply may only hold for hospice volunteers and are not generalizable to volunteers in general.…”

“…On the other hand, empirical studies examine the general decision to volunteer (in hospice services; Stelzer and Lang 2014), the determinants of an ongoing provision of volunteer work (Claxton-Oldfield and Jones 2013) and the changes in the volunteer experience over time (Nissim et al 2014). …”

Volunteering in Palliative Care in France: “A Tough Job”; Patient, Family, Caregiver, and Volunteer Perspectives

“…There is a good deal of research on the motivations of volunteers in palliative care [2,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. These works show that while volunteers are inspired in the first place by a desire to help others and therefore by altruistic and philanthropic values, they are often interested in seeking benefits for themselves as well, with these two types of motivation becoming interwoven, evolving over time and varying according to countries' cultures.…”