Influence of Role Identities on Volunteer Intentions

Volunteers are a core service component of sport delivery (Chalip & Green, 1998) although most sport organizations/events are not charitable organizations. However, there is a dearth of research to explore the uniqueness of sport volunteers. The current study attempted to show what kinds of role identities predict an individual's volunteer intentions for both sporting and non-sporting events. The study was conducted with 229 students (F=90; M=138; No Answer=1) at a large southern university. The average age of the respondents was 21 years and approximately 70% were Caucasian/White. Over 80% had volunteer experiences in charitable events/organizations and about 35% had volunteer experiences specific to a university sport event. Eight different potential role identities were measured Team, Sport, University, Player, Coach, Level of Sport, University, and Community (21 items, 7 subscales of the Points of Attachment Index's, Trail et al., 2003) and Volunteer (3 items from Callero et al.'s, 1987, questionnaire). Three single item measures were used to represent Intentions to Volunteer for (1) University Sporting Events, (2) University Non-Sport related Events, and (3) Non-University Charitable Organizations/Events. The CFA (AMOS 6.0) indicated adequate model fit for the measurement model (RMSEA, e_a=.072, c²/df=2.18). Other fit indices were also acceptable (CFI=.928; IFI=.927). The AVE values of all subscales exceeded .60, indicating the items represented the construct well (Hair et al., 1998) and the internal consistency estimates ranged from .81 to .89. Finally, step-wise multiple regression analyses showed that Team Identity explained 25.4% of the variance in Intention to Volunteer for University Sporting Events and Level of Sport Identity and Volunteer Identity explained an additional 5.6% and 2.9% respectively. Furthermore, Volunteer Identity explained a significant of amount variance in Intentions to Volunteer for University Non-sporting Events (R²=.33) and Non-University Charitable Events/Organizations(R²=.44). University Identity and Coach Identity explained an additional 9.2% of the variance in Volunteer Intention for University Non-Sporting Events and University Identity and Community Identity explained an additional 4.2% in Volunteer Intention for Non-University Charitable Events/Organizations. These results indicated that an individual's different role identities were significant factors in determining the potential volunteer sites. Interestingly, volunteering for university sport-related events was predicted to a greater extent by the attachment to the Team rather than a Volunteer Identity. However, for non-sporting events, Volunteer Identity was the major predictor.
Keyword(s): research, sport management