Exploring the relationship between local volunteering opportunities and the propensity to volunteer using a nationally representative survey of adults in Wales

ABSTRACT

This study explored the respective importance of compositional (individual) and contextual (neighbourhood) factors associated with the propensity to engage in formal volunteering among a nationally representative sample of adults in Wales, UK. To date, while certain contextual characteristics of local communities have been found to be associated with the propensity to volunteer, compositional characteristics of residents tend to be stronger predictors. Few studies to date have specifically explored associations with local volunteering opportunities. To address such gaps, this study examined the extent to which such opportunities and broader neighbourhood factors such as urban/rural status and deprivation impacted upon propensities to volunteer, adjusting for important compositional predictors of voluntarism. In summary, while volunteering was marginally associated with a measure of local voluntary opportunities, hinting that the odds of formal volunteering are greater among those living in areas with more local voluntary organizations, this association was not retained following adjustment for other factors. This suggests that much of the area-level variance is explained by spatial variations in compositional factors. Further research is needed to examine determinants of volunteering behaviour at a range of spatial scales by drawing on wider measures of volunteering opportunities, before the factors at play can be fully understood.

KEYWORDS:

• Formal volunteering
• neighbourhood effects
• National Survey for Wales (NSW)
• geographical information systems
• logistic regression models

Acknowledgements

We thank Welsh Government for granting access to the lower geographical information of NSW respondents. However, the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any of these organizations.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

Census data were downloaded from NOMIS, a service provided by the Office for National Statistics to provide free access to the Census of Population data. This information is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2). Office for National Statistics, 2011 Census: Digitised Boundary Data (England and Wales) [computer file]. UK Data Service Census Support, downloaded from https://borders.ukdataservice.ac.uk. National Survey for Wales metadata were obtained from the UK Data Service (https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/).

Notes

1 https://gov.wales/national-survey-wales

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). WISERD is a collaborative venture between the Universities of Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, South Wales, and Swansea [grant number: ES/S012435/1]. NP is supported by the Centre for Development, Evaluation, Complexity and Implementation in Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), funded by Welsh Government through Health and Care Research Wales.