International research in volunteer motivations can be divided into three distinct stages, which represent the development the research of volunteer motivations went through, becoming more structured over time.
- The first volunteer motivation research was conducted in 1973 by Pitterman, who examined volunteer motivations and their relation to the accrual of persona, social and indirect economic advantages. He concluded that the importance of these rewards varies with age (for instance, the elderly are more concerned with social rewards, while the young are more concerned with indirect economic advantages, such as work experience). Research interest in the 1980s was dominated by two and three factor models, such as the altruistic, the egoistic and the social motivation models. These were generally developed by reliance on self-assessment surveys by Red Cross volunteers (Frisch and Gerrard, 1981).
- In the early 1990s, Cnaan and Goldberg-Geln (1991) reviewed and summarised volunteer motivation studies and concluded that earlier studies were predominantly descriptive and were less based on systematic methodologies. Based on previous methodological studies, a questionnaire containing 28 items was compiled, from which the Motivation to Volunteer (MTV0 scale was derived. This was subsequently tested among 250 volunteers and 150 non-volunteer subjects. The findings indicated that volunteers do not make their decisions to volunteer based on only one motivation, so volunteer motivations are determined by a combination of egoistic and altruistic motivations.
- The direction of later 1990s studies was to analyse previous empirical studies and determine measurable factors of a primary motivations to volunteer. Based on this, Clary, Snyder and Ridge (1992) identified six volunteer factors: values, understanding, career, social, esteem and protective. Individual factors were measured by thirty questions on a seven-point Likert scale with 1000 volunteers working with AIDS patients and a control group of 500 university students. Based on this, the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) was devised, opening a new chapter in the analysis of volunteer motivations.
- From the 1990s, research concentrated on setting up questionnaires and inventories to assay volunteer motivation. In 2002, McEwin and D’Arcy’s multi-stage methodology (focus groups, open questions, pilot study) resulted in eight motivational factors: values, career, presonal growth, recognition, hedonism, social, reactivity and reciprocity. To measure these factors, a Volunteer Motivation Inventory (VMI) containing 40 questions on a five-point Likert scale was used, which was tested on 500 volunteers at different organisations.
- The standardisation of the VMI continued in 2004 with Esmond and Dunlop, for which McEwin and D’Arcy’s (2002) VMI and Clary, Snyder and Ridge’s (1998) Volunteer Functions Inventory. Esmond and Dunlop (2004) have created a complex VMI capable of differentiated measurement of motivations along ten motivational factors - values, reciprocity, recognition, understanding, self-esteem, reactivity, social, protection, social interaction and career development. Subjects were asked to evaluate these in 44 questions along a five-point Likert scale. The surveys were taken among 2444 volunteers in Western Australia, thus being the largest volunteer motivation survey. According to the results, the most important motivations were values, reciprocity and recognition/prestige. At the same time, correlation analysis revealed that motivations are not entirely independent from each other, as some motivational factors seem to correlate with others. The comparison of motivational factors with demographic-sociostatistical variables revealed that among the Australian volunteers, too, the most defining variable was age, and gender differences were most prevalent in differences in the dominance of various motivation factors. Differences between low and higher income volunteers were mainly between particular correlates among motivational factors.
Summing up, it is apparent that while in the beginning (1970s-80s), volunteer motivational research was mainly viewed from a psychological angle, this was supplanted by an interdisciplinary perspective from the 1990s onwards, melding psychological, sociopsychological and sociological studies. At the same time, research methodologies have become more standardised and in describing volunteer motivations - both in framing motivational factors and in replacing one or two factor models with multi-factorial models to describe volunteer motivation. While earlier studies were characterised by small sample size and focus on a single volunteer group or organisation and mainly relied on self-description by the respondents, later studies were characterised by a larger sample size and respondents drawn from a diverse array of organisations.
