Is Volunteering Rewarding in Itself?

By Stephan Meier, Alois Stutzer. Social Science Research Network, 2007

625 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Volunteering constitutes one of the most important pro-social activities. Following Aristotle, helping others is the way to higher individual wellbeing. This view contrasts with the selfish utility maximizer, who avoids helping others. The two rival views are studied empirically. We find robust evidence that volunteers are more satisfied with their life than non-volunteers. The issue of causality is studied from the basis of the collapse of East Germany and its infrastructure of volunteering. People who lost their opportunities for volunteering are compared with people who experienced no change in their volunteer status.

Subfields: Safety Research, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b5ea5c6151567ddea66953e1a49af03bcf674d92

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Citations in the corpus

Measuring Well-being Across Europe: Description of the ESS Well-being Module and Preliminary Findings (2009, background): “giving to others, doing things for others or volunteering, may contribute more to our general well-being and even to our physical health, than receiving support (Brown 2003; Brown et al. 2003; Post 2005; Meier and Stutzer 2008 ).”
The Role of Spiritual Well-Being and Materialism in Determining Consumers’ Ethical Beliefs: An Empirical Study with Australian Consumers (2012, background): “Research has also demonstrated that volunteering enhances personal well-being (Meier and Stutzer 2008; Mellor et al. 2009) and increases self-esteem (Thoits and Hewitt 2001).”
Watching alone: Relational goods, television and happiness (2008, background): “It is important to observe that the information available in the WVS allows to identify the net effect of the relational component of voluntary activities (actual involvement, as opposed to simple membership), and also to assess and compare the role played by individual voluntary activities (these t”
Suffer the little children: Measuring the effects of parenthood on well-being worldwide (2012, positive): “This literature has contributed to shed light on the determinants and implications of choices in a number of different domains, from marriage (Frey and Stutzer, 2006) to volunteering (Meier and Stutzer, 2008) and interpersonal relationships (Bruni and Stanca, 2008).”