Doing Good Online: The Changing Relationships Between Motivations, Activity, and Retention Among Online Volunteers
利用调查数据，研究了网络志愿者的六类动机与活动及留任的关系，发现理解和价值观动机正向关联，社交和职业动机负向关联，且动机重要性随参与阶段变化。
Advances in Internet technology are making it possible for individuals to volunteer online and participate in research-based activities of nonprofit organizations. Using survey data from a representative sample of such contributors, this study investigates their motivations to volunteer for five online volunteering projects using the Volunteer Functions Inventory. We explore relationships between these six categories of motivation and actual recorded measures of both volunteer activity and retention. We also use quantile regression analysis to investigate the extent to which these motivations change at different stages in the volunteer process. Our results show that volunteers’ activity and retention tend to associate significantly and positively with the motivations of understanding and values, as well as significantly and negatively with the social and career motivations. We also find the importance of motivations changes significantly across the stages of volunteer engagement. In some cases, especially the understanding motivation, the changes observed for activity and retention are markedly different.