Football volunteering and subjective well-being: a multi-country study of different voluntary roles and well-being measures

ABSTRACT

Research question

Drawing on different theoretical views of subjective well-being (SWB), this study examines the associations between football volunteering in general, volunteering in specific roles, and different SWB measures. It also assigns monetary values to volunteering using the well-being valuation approach.

Research methods

The analysis uses survey data of adult football club members and volunteers in seven European countries (n = 19,939). Volunteering is measured by the number of monthly volunteering hours in total and in administrative, sport-related, and operational roles. SWB is captured by life satisfaction, happiness, and a multi-item scale. Linear and instrumental variable (IV) regression models are estimated.

Results and findings

The number of volunteering hours has no significant association in the linear models, but a significant positive association with all three SWB measures in the IV estimations. Differences in volunteering hours between during and before the pandemic are positively associated with differences in SWB. Administrative and sport-related hours are negatively associated with some SWB measures in the linear models, while the IV models reveal a positive association for sport-related roles. Operational roles tend to be positively related to SWB independent of estimator and SWB measure. The monetary values of the IV estimations are higher than those of the linear models. The values from the happiness models exceed those of the life satisfaction models. One hour of volunteering in an operational role is valued higher than one hour in a sport-related role.

Implications

For scholars, it is more important to distinguish between different voluntary roles than between different SWB measures. For practitioners, the results imply that support should be targeted particularly at volunteers in administrative and sport-related roles.

KEYWORDS:

• Happiness
• instrumental variables
• life satisfaction
• volunteerism
• well-being valuation

Acknowledgments

Pamela Wicker and Larissa E. Davies received financial support from the UEFA for the research, but not for the authorship or publication of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Further exploitation of voluntary roles is restricted by the limited availability of instrumental variables.

2 A potential non-linear effect of monthly volunteering hours was examined by including squared terms, but they were insignificant.

3 Other sources of endogeneity include simultaneity issues and omitted variable bias. The latter is driven by variables that might also be relevant to SWB, but are not included in our analysis (e.g., marital status, children).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UEFA.