UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Lai Nguyen Minh Hung Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being: Evidence from Vietnam MASTER OF BUSINESS Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Lai Nguyen Minh Hung Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being: Evidence from Vietnam ID: 22140019 MASTER OF BUSINESS SUPERVISOR: Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table of Contents Abstract. Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being. Moderating role of personality traits on relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.
Design and Samples. Data analysis and results. Volunteering Motives analysis. Final measurement model.
Implications for volunteering leaders. Limitations and further research. 45 C: Tables and Figures. 48 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Abstract This study investigates the impact Volunteering Motives on Personal Well- being of Volunteers in Hochiminh, Vietnam.
The result of this paper will support volunteering clubs to maintain a good volunteering environment by applying these volunteering motives to their organizations. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the impact, using the sample of 313 volunteers from volunteering clubs around Hochiminh city. The result show that Volunteering Motives has positive impact on the Personal Well-being of volunteers. Furthermore, this study also aims at investigating the moderating effect of Personality traits on the relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.
The result indicates that the impact of Volunteering Motives on Personal Well-being is not different in terms of Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. Nevertheless, differences appear in Extraversion and Openness group. Based on this consequence, volunteering clubs could adjust their organization to foster these motives to maintain and attract skilled volunteers. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Research background The motivation of people to volunteer has long fascinated in academic researches (Reeder, Davison, Gipson, & Hesson-McInnis, 2001; Rehberg, 2005). Understanding the underlying motivational concerns of those who volunteer has been a topic occupying much of the literature related to volunteering (Boz & Palaz, 2007; Mannino, Snyder & Omoto, 2011). What actually motivates a person to volunteer is a complex and contrary argument, some people suppose that individuals doing volunteering because they want to develop themselves and learn experiences (Clary & Snyder, 1999; Hallmann & Harms, 2012; Gage & Thapa, 2012), others contend that people are motivated to volunteer by their altruistic motives and self-interest (Sherer, 2004; Rehberg, 2005; Geiser, Okun, & Grano, 2014). Understanding these motivations can be the great assistance to organizations in attracting and retaining volunteers.
Firstly, organizations can use information on motivations to attract potential volunteers by tailoring recruitment messages to closely match their motivational needs. Secondly, in assessing the motivational needs of new volunteers, organizations can ensure effective placement of volunteers into activities that meet their expectations. Thirdly, by understanding their volunteers’ motives, organizations can seek to maintain volunteer satisfaction by ensuring these motivations are fulfilled. Recently, volunteering has played more and more important roles in business, society and community (Faulkner & Davies, 2005; Prabhu, Hanley & Kearney, 2008).
Considering business aspect, entrepreneur supposes that corporate volunteering is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Do Paco & Cláudia Nave, 2013). In Vietnam, especially Hochiminh city, there are some kinds of volunteering organizations 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com established and operating recently such as Vi Cong Dong volunteering club (www.vn) or Net But Xanh volunteering club (www.com), both are non-profit organizations (NPO). Beside, many companies have their corporate social responsibility (CSR) division such as Vinamilk, FPT, Vina Capital (Dinh Dung, 2012). In general, CSR becomes a prevailing term in recent years, it is defined by four components layouted into a pyramid.
The bottom of this pyramid is economic responsibilities, business needs to earn the profit firstly. The upper one is legal responsibilities, business has to obey the law and related-obligations. The higher one is ethical responsibilities; it embodies standards, norms, expectations that reflect concerns for what consumers, employees, shareholders, community as fair. The top one of this pyramid is philanthropic responsibilities, it encompasses corporate actions that are in response to society’s expectation to help business be good corporate citizens (Caroll, 1991).
Considering society and community aspect, if we type word “volunteering” on Google, we could easily find some information related to this key word. The need and the role of volunteering are increased significantly due to the social, medical, economic problems and the changes of environment, climate. Particularly, in 2014, Vietnam collected 1,054 million blood units, this number only served 58% the demand of blood and surprisingly 92% of these blood units received were provided by volunteering activities (Huynh Hai, 2015; Minh Duc, 2015). Weekly, monthly, on the internet, we could read at least several newspapers writing about volunteers providing food and beverage for homeless or miserable people (Phuong Trang, 2016).
Occasionally, we meet volunteers working at traffic lights or appearing at the hot spots of traffic jams under the bad weather in Vietnam (Nhu Lich, 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Hoang Phan & Trieu Duong, 2014). Annually, in July, a lot of students from different universities in Hochiminh City spend their time on helping Grade-12 students on final exam-to-University or College (Thuan Giang, 2015). Moreover, when it comes to rainy season or dry season, the center of Vietnam often faces a lot of bad weather, disaster, drought, flood and storm. However, many young people are volunteering to fight with the nature and help others to overcome this worse circumstance (Quynh Anh, 2016).
And most of them are unpaid volunteers. Our questions are why rational people devote their valuable time for stressful and much responsible works in difficult situation, difficult weather, day and night? What motives encouraging people to undertake these hard responsibilities and keep them stay with volunteering works? Why young people accept to sacrifice many hours a week taking part in potentially dangerous job without any payment? What factors appeal volunteers to participate in volunteering clubs or keep them on the unpaid job? Why some volunteers are satisfied with volunteering jobs and devote their spare time to work for volunteering activities. We strongly believe that understanding these motives help organizations increase the satisfaction for sustained volunteers. Several researches supposed that volunteers start their volunteering work because of some motives such as: they want to help difficult people, they want to learn skills and experience, they expect the identity in community, they want to extent their relationship or improve their career (Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen & Meine, 1998; Clary & Snyder, 1999).
Furthermore, they continue their volunteering work if their motives are fulfilled (Grant, 2012; Lester, Tomkovick, Wells, Flunker & Kickul, 2005; Clary et al. Grant (2012) has raised an idea that sustained 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com volunteering is driven by the satisfaction of their motives, however, this scholar did not focus particularly on the relationship between motives and Personal Well-being. Clary et al. (1998) indicated the relationship between motives and satisfaction, but they have passed the role of Personal Well-being.
Veerasamy, Sambasivan, and Kumar (2015) has underlined the significant impact of motives on Personal Well- being, however, in this study, motives and Personal Well-being plays the role of independent variables instead of dependent variables. Actually, despite these factors are very important to attract and develop volunteering forces, not many researches have been conducted to investigate the relationship between these motives and Personal Well-being of volunteers in Hochiminh City, Vietnam. Besides the study of the volunteering ‘s motives, in this study, we would like to understand about the volunteers’ personality traits. Volunteers often encounter with stressful unpaid job and several jobs are very dangerous (Duc Hung, 2016).
In some cases, the working condition is difficult for them (Nguyen Hong Quan, 2015). It raises a question that whether there are any outstanding personality traits in volunteers that could help them overcome these difficulties and how these personality traits affect their Personal Well- being. There are several researches studying about personality traits of individuals, some traits are listed such as: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness (John, Naumann & Soto, 2008; Rammstedt & John, 2007). However, these factors are applied to whole and general individuals not particular people working in volunteering field.
Veerasamy et al. (2015) has studied about the relationship between personality traits as independent variables and life satisfaction as dependent variable, however, they did not mention the role of 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com personality traits as moderators. Furthermore, their research was surveyed based on health care volunteers working in Malaysia – a developed country not a developing nation as Vietnam. Therefore, in this paper, we study the effect of personality traits on the relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.
John, Naumann, and Soto (2008) conducted a study to identify what are the main personality traits of an individual. In this study, they have shown the big five personality traits: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. A study supposed some factors keep volunteers on their unpaid jobs that are Values, Understanding, Social, Career, Protective, Enhancement (Clary & Snyder, 1999). Smith (1994) supposed that volunteers are not totally generous, therefore, “Desire to Help Others” is not actually main motivated factor for developing and maintaining volunteering programs.
He believes that volunteering has positive relation with costs and benefits. Fletcher and Major (2004) and Fisher and Ackerman (1998) supposed that people want to help others due to some reason such as: purposeful, selfless, and humanitarian motives; self-interest, such as accumulating career-related experience; social objectives, like pro-social behaviors, social-role enhancement, and social role recognition. This article attempts to identify what kinds of typical characteristic found in volunteers, which factors affecting volunteers’ Personal Well-being. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between these Volunteering motives and volunteers’ Personal Well-being.
7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The objectives of this study to: - investigate the impact of Volunteering Motives on Personal Well-being of volunteers, and then examine the moderating effects of Personality Traits on relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being. The contribution of this article is to support profit and non-profit organizations and foster these factors in their volunteering activities to attract, maintain and increase the number of volunteers in Hochiminh City and other locations which have few volunteering organizations but demand for volunteering is very high. According to Thoits and Hewitt (2001), people who have great well-being tend to spend more time in volunteering, it represents the relation between well-being and intention to involve in volunteering activities. Furthermore, this study shows some typical personality traits of volunteers and this helps volunteering organizations identify and recruit proper volunteers for their volunteering projects.
Literature reviews This study proposes that Volunteering Motives (M) has a positive effect on Personal Well-being (PWB). Further, it also posits that Personality Traits such as Openness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness play the role of moderators. Figure 1 supposes a conceptual model for this relationship. 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com H1 Volunteering Personal Well- Motives being (PWB) H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 Openness Extraversion Neuroticism Conscientiousness Agreeableness Figure 1.
Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being Personal Well-being (PWB) or Subjective Well-being (SWB) or Well-Being (WB) is the term to describe how people experience the living quality encompassing emotional reactions and cognitive judgments (Diener, 1984). Diener, Lucas, and Oishi (2002) define Subjective Well-being as a person’s cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life, these evaluations comprise emotional reaction as well as cognitive judgements of satisfaction and fulfilment. The cognitive component refers to what one thinks about his or her Well-being in global terms (life as a whole) and in domain terms (in specific areas of life such as work, relationships, health, living conditions, etc. The affective component refers to emotions, moods and feelings.