Volunteering for sports mega events: a non-host region perspective

ABSTRACT

Despite a plethora of studies focussing on sports mega event volunteering, little is known about volunteers who live outside of the host city. This exploratory research makes a novel contribution by focusing on a group of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers from a non-host region. Within this context, the study explores volunteers’ motives, the utility of using financial subsidies to support volunteering participation, and their attitudes towards post-event volunteering. Semi-structured interviews with twelve volunteers were conducted, accompanied by interviews with key local stakeholders. The findings suggest that Olympic-related factors and altruistic feelings were central motivations to volunteering. Some previous volunteering experiences increased confidence levels to volunteer at the Olympics. The financial scheme was perceived as an impetus further enhancing Leicestershire residents’ confidence to volunteer. Programme participants also indicated positive attitudes towards future volunteering intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteers
• non-host region
• the Olympic Games
• community support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Shushu Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4010-9177

Jinming Zheng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5766-7779

Geoff Dickson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9913-0125

Notes

1 Inspire Leicestershire was a local partnership programme, comprising Leicestershire local authorities working collaboratively to maximise the benefits of London’s hosting of the Olympics.

2 Leicester-Shire & Rutland Sport (LRS) are a County Sport Partnership for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland.

3 According to the Inspire Leicestershire Director, there in excess of 150 people from Leicestershire who volunteered for the Games.

4 Trailblazers were part of the pre-Games volunteer programme and were responsible for recruiting Games Maker volunteers.

5 As explained in Note 4 above, Trailblazers was part of the pre-Games volunteer programme. This particular interview was carried out immediately after the Trailblazer volunteer finished her work at London.

6 Voluntary Action Leicestershire is a charity organization that encourages people to volunteer.

7 In fact, the potential impact of the Leicestershire Games Makers scheme might be underestimated because the Leicestershire scheme was initiated and advertised after the Games Maker application was closed.