Volunteering in sport is more prevalent in small (but not tiny) communities: Insights from 19 countries

Abstract

Although emerging research suggests members of smaller communities are more likely to play sport, including professional sport, there is little understanding of what sociocultural factors may be associated with sporting contexts in smaller communities. The purpose of this study was to assess if members of smaller communities are also more likely to volunteer in sport. Data were acquired from wave four of the World Value Survey. The analysis involved 22,461 participants from 19 countries. Hierarchal non-linear Bernoulli modelling was used to examine the association between community size and active volunteering with a sport organisation. After controlling for country-level clustering and demographic variables – including sport participation – participants from communities with between 2001 and 20,000 residents were more likely to report volunteering in sport, relative to participants from larger communities (> 500,000). In particular, participants from communities with between 2001 and 5000 residents were the most overrepresented, being 2.17 (95% OR: 1.94–2.43) times more likely to report volunteering than large communities (> 500,000). Moreover, the effect of community size occurred for all other measured forms of volunteering, thus contradicting the idea that limited volunteering opportunities in smaller communities is driving this effect. These findings provide novel evidence that participants from smaller communities are more likely to volunteer, even when controlling for sport participation. Future research should aim to reveal the specific determinants and consequences of sport volunteering in smaller communities.

Keywords:

• pro-social behaviour
• cross-country
• Bernoulli models
• city size

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank the World Value Survey Group.