A Person-Environment Fit Approach to Volunteerism: Volunteer Personality Fit and Culture Fit as Predictors of Affective Outcomes

Abstract

This study employed a person-environment (P-E) fit approach to explaining volunteer satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions. It was hypothesized that personality fit would explain additional variance in volunteer affective outcomes above and beyond motives to volunteer. This hypothesis was supported. Personality fit but not culture fit was related to satisfaction and affective commitment. Volunteer turnover intentions were predicted by gender and by social and values motives. The implications of the results are discussed with respect to the two literature domains that were combined in this study: the functional approach to volunteerism and P-E fit theory. Functional approaches to volunteerism and paid work should be more strongly linked to each other in future research. Moreover, P-E fit theory should be extended by including conditional determinants that moderate P-E fit effects.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the six volunteer organizations that participated in this study and Erik van't Wout for collecting the data.

Notes

Note. Total sample sizes ranged from 147 to 158 because of missing data.

^a Male = 1, female = 2

^b Paid job = 1, no paid job = 2

∗p < .05

∗∗p < .01

The reported statistics are standardized regression coefficients and are for the final equation, including all independent variables.

^a Male = 1, female = 2

^b Paid job = 1, no paid job = 2

∗p < .05

∗∗p < .01