Volunteers and leisure: Evidence of marginal and career volunteerism in sport 1

Transcription

1 : Evidence of marginal and career volunteerism in sport 1 Graham Cuskelly, PhD and Maureen Harrington, PhD School of Leisure Studies Griffith University, Brisbane Q ABSTRACT Aside from the work of Stebbins (1982; 1996), Henderson (1981; 1984), and Pearce (1993), few researchers have examined volunteering from a leisure perspective. The study of volunteering has been stymied by difficulties in being able to clearly categorise the activity as work or as leisure. Volunteering is altruistic, service oriented (helping others) and often involves obligation whereas leisure is largely self-determined, relatively free from obligation and concerned with personal enjoyment. This paper presents a work/leisure continuum typology for volunteering in sport. Using a self-administered questionnaire, data were collected from a sample of volunteer sport administrators (n = 444). The subjects were asked why they initially chose to volunteer and whether their experience of volunteering felt more like leisure or more like work. Subject s responses to why they initially chose to volunteer were used to categorise them as either marginal or career volunteers. The marginal volunteers were further subdivided into two types, obligeers and role dependees. The career volunteers were also subdivided into two types, altruistic leisure careerists and self-interested leisure careerists. Differences between the four volunteer types were investigated through their ratings of the importance of a number of perceived leisure benefits statements, sociodemographic and behavioural characteristics. This paper contributes to leisure studies and voluntary action research by demonstrating that volunteering does occur along a work/leisure continuum, but a more meaningful conceptualisation would incorporate non-work related obligations. 1 The authors wish to acknowledge the comments of Robert A. Stebbins on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

2 INTRODUCTION There is no denying the importance of volunteers to community-level organisations in sports, recreation and human services. Organisations rely on volunteers to deliver needed services, and to take positions on committees. Needless to say, many local-level organisations depend for their survival upon the willingness of volunteers with an active interest and involvement in the endeavour. The nature of volunteerism, the motivations for volunteering and benefits of being a volunteer have interested social researchers and third-sector organisations for quite some time. Leisure researchers have raised the question of whether voluntary activity should be conceptualised as work or as leisure, a question that remains unresolved. This article is based on a study of volunteers within local, regional and state level not-for-profit sports organisations in Queensland, Australia and attempts to locate the experiences of volunteering in sports along a work/leisure continuum. A substantial volume of literature has investigated the motivations of volunteers. Largely, it attempted to characterise those who volunteer or provided lists of reasons for volunteering and sought to differentiate individuals by their motives. For example, Heidrich (1990) provided an inexhaustive list of categories of reasons that people volunteer including to increase social contact, help others, fill leisure time, meet the expectations of others and gain recognition. Pearce (1993) undertook an extensive review and concluded that volunteers seek satisfaction of a wide range of personal needs, but volunteering to serve (altruism), for social contact, and promoting the goals of the particular organisation appear across a wide range of studies. Using an incentives typology to study motives for initiating and continuing membership, Caldwell and Andereck (1994) found that purposive motives, based on global concerns of a suprapersonal nature (altruism), were the strongest motive for joining a voluntary association followed by solidary (family participation) and material benefits. Murnighan, Kim and Metzger (1993) found in their experimental studies that personal benefits were the greatest motivators for volunteering, and that research on voluntary organisations shows that they put less emphasis on motivating through an appeal to altruism. They quote Smith (1983:25) who says Volunteers are not generally altruistic although they like to think of themselves as altruistic (see Murnighan et.al., 1993:518). Phillips (1982) has pointed out that altruism and self-interest act consecutively as motivations for volunteering. In contrast to other volunteer researchers, Stebbins (1996) prefers to integrate altruism and self-interestedness within a common framework which he referred to as career volunteering. Henderson (1981:210) states the case most succinctly as the reasons people volunteer are never completely altruistic or selfish...a volunteer wlra97a.docx Page 2

3 will be motivated when primary interest, obligations and needs can be met comfortably while giving service to others. For Tedrick and Henderson (1989) volunteering is a link between the work and non-work spheres of life. They argued that apart from the monetary rewards, volunteer seek many of the personal benefits associated with work, such as problem solving, socialising, status and feelings of achievement. Pearce (1993:182) observes that volunteering is a paradox and that we become perplexed when confronted with behavior that does not fit neatly into the distinct categories of work or leisure. Volunteers are not paid for what they do within organisational settings to achieve organisational goals. She argues that volunteering is legitimised by emphasising its work facet, but this implies that volunteers receive rewards for their work, in much the same ways as employees receive pay. However, the rewards for volunteering that seem most important are not under the control of the organization but derive from the participation itself (Pearce, 1993:181). Volunteering is motivated by enjoyment of the activity, social interaction, satisfaction with contributing to the larger social good and when in the mood. In his definition of leisure, Kaplan (1975: 26) provides support for the view that volunteering is leisure which he defines in terms of self-determination, free-time roles, norms and constraints, and provides opportunities for recreation, personal growth and service to others (italics ours). For Pearce (1993:182) volunteering is leisure and is motivated by the enjoyment and satisfaction that comes from social interaction or from contributing to a larger social good. It was Stebbins (1979) who first contrasted serious leisure with casual leisure and work. He identified career volunteering, amateurism and hobbyist activities as three forms of serious leisure which he has defined as the systematic pursuit...sufficiently substantial and interesting for the participant to find a career there in the acquisition and expression of a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience (Stebbins, 1993:23). Most recently, Stebbins (1997a:18) has defined casual leisure as immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived, pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. In conceptualising serious leisure, Stebbins identified a number of qualities that distinguish it from casual and other forms of leisure. Among these qualities is the occasional need to persevere, the tendency towards a career-type of endeavour or enduring involvement, significant personal effort, durable benefits, a unique ethos associated with the pursuit and to identify strongly with that pursuit. Stebbins conceded that these qualities are more often attributed to and used to analyse the world of work, yet argued that serious leisure manifests these same characteristics. Parker (1992:10) ascribes to Stebbins conceptualisation and states that serious leisure gets the wlra97a.docx Page 3

4 best of both work and leisure worlds and is the most deeply satisfying and humanly productive of all activities. Like Stebbins and Parker, Henderson (1984) conceptualises volunteerism as a form of leisure, and remarks on the similarity in the benefits of both. Volunteering is a specific and identifiable type of leisure activity or experience that seems to provide a link between needs and attitudes often associated with the separate, but not necessarily opposite, domains of work and leisure. What is valuable about Stebbins (1993:23) approach to career volunteering and other forms of serious leisure is that he conceptualises it as falling at the mesostructural level of social analysis between the spheres of immediate social interaction and... such all-encompassing abstractions as community, society, social class and large-scale organisation, where social worlds emerge. Along with other forms of serious leisure career volunteering has personal and social rewards and contributes to both communal and social integration (Stebbins, 1997b). Stebbins (1996) is quick to point out that while serious leisure theory applies to career volunteering it cannot be applied to all types of volunteering. He uses the term marginal volunteering to refer to volunteering for occupational reasons or that which results from coercion or a strong sense of obligation. In a study of sport volunteers, Daly (1991) found evidence which supports the position that some individuals felt obligated to volunteer. The present authors were intrigued by this possibility given the generally positive view of volunteering. Serious leisure theory provides a useful perspective from which to study the motivations for and benefits of volunteering in its various forms, recognising that not all types of volunteering can be conceived of as leisure. The purpose of this paper was to examine motives for volunteering using a work/leisure framework. To this end the following research questions were addressed. Why do people initially choose to become volunteer administrators in sport? What categories or types of volunteering are suggested by the literature and emerge from the responses to the question of why volunteer? To what extent do different volunteer types perceive their experience of volunteering as more like work or more like leisure? Are there differences between volunteer types in their perceptions of leisure benefits or sociodemographic or behavioural characteristics? Data about why people decide to continue as a volunteer and whether this changes from reasons for initially deciding to volunteer were collected but is not reported in this paper. METHODOLOGY As a part of a larger time-lagged study data were collected in 1993 from volunteer sports administrators using a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 52 organisations were visited after being randomly selected wlra97a.docx Page 4

5 from records held by local and state government authorities in the Brisbane metropolitan area. Some 469 volunteers consented to participate in the study of which 444 provided useable data. Completed questionnaires were returned to the first researcher in person or by using a reply paid envelope. Volunteer sports administrators were operationally defined as individuals who were formally elected or appointed on a voluntary basis to the current committee or board responsible for the administration of a not-for-profit sporting club or association. The questionnaire was pilot tested with 159 volunteer sport administrators. It used a range of open-ended, closed-ended and Likert-scale items to measure variables including reasons for initially deciding to become a volunteer, behavioural aspects of volunteering (e.g., hours per week and years involvement), sociodemographic characteristics, and perceived importance of leisure benefits. Responses to the open ended question, why did you initially choose to become a volunteer for this sporting organisation? were coded using a three step (open, axial and selective) coding procedure (Neuman, 1996) which emerged as the conceptual framework for this paper (see Figure 1). There were no preset conditions on the number of cases within each of the four volunteer types. Table 1 displays the two categories of volunteers, the four axial codes (types of volunteers), and gives examples of open codes. WORK LEISURE Marginal volunteers Leisure careerists Obligeers Role dependees Altruistic Selfinterested Figure 1 Volunteer types in sport on a work/leisure continuum. wlra97a.docx Page 5

6 Table 1 Open and axial coding scheme used to categorise volunteer types Volunteer category Axial codes (volunteer types) Examples of open codes Marginal volunteers Obligeers (n=110) Felt that I should ; To give back to or put back into sport; lack of others / no-one else to volunteer / everyone should have a turn; perceived incompetence of others / poor administration; club survival; pressured / coerced / roped in; asked / invited / felt that I should help friends. Role dependees (n=92) Children involved in the sport or club; family involved in the sport or club; here because one of my family members (especially children) participate. Leisure careerists Altruistic leisure careerists (n=96) Felt that I wanted to help / help others; love of sport / attachment to sport; to develop the club or association or the sport; felt / saw a need for volunteers; interested in youth / young people. Self-interested leisure careerists (n=115) Personal development; develop or use skills and knowledge, learn, share knowledge; enjoyment / satisfaction / chose to; perceived competence (felt I could do the job) / something to offer; challenge; meeting / mixing with others / socialising; played the sport / extending participation; affinity with sport or club; be involved / be active. (Missing cases = 31) Of the 444 valid cases, 422 responded to the open-ended question about why they initially chose to volunteer, of which 9 could not be categorised into one of four types (missing cases = 31). The data were coded separately by the two researchers for the open and axial coding steps. Meetings were held after each step to reconcile different codes, to refine the coding process and to test for intercoder reliability (Miles and Huberman, 1994:64). After separately completing the axial coding step, intercoder reliability was 80%. Of the 20% of cases coded differently between the researchers most were because the subjects had given more than one reason for choosing to volunteer. Further discussion between the two researchers resulted in agreement about the most appropriate category for each of these cases except for the 9 cases that did not lend themselves to being coded as one of the four types. A particular problem with the role dependee subjects was that they tended to give multiple reasons for volunteering. It was agreed between the researchers that being a parent of a junior player took priority in categorising such cases as role dependees. The basis for this decision was that being a parent of a junior participant was a fundamental reason for volunteering, in that many of these respondents, in all likelihood, would not have become volunteers without the involvement of their child or children. Using an adaptation of the Recreation Experience Preference (REP) Scale (Driver, Tinsley and Manfredo, 1991) respondents were asked to rate the importance on a 5 point Likert-scale (1 = unimportant ; 5 wlra97a.docx Page 6

7 = very important ) of thirty leisure benefits statements in relation to being a volunteer. Twenty-five of the perceived leisure benefits scale items were factor analysed using principal components analysis and varimax rotation which resulted in a six factor solution that explained 61.9% of the scale variance (see Table 2). Five items that measured altruism (e.g., help this sport develop and help others enjoy their sport ) were not included in the factor analysis because altruistic leisure careerists was one of the volunteer types identified in the study. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients for each of the factors were personal rewards (alpha = 0.86), social rewards (0.82), relaxation (0.72), social competence (0.68), independence (0.59) and enrichment (0.46). RESULTS The largest proportions of the sample were aged years (41.5%), male (69.4%), married (86.4%), had completed post-secondary education (42.2%), and were employed in management or administration (27.2%) or a profession (23.5%). The volunteers had been members of their sports club or association for a mean of nine years, had five years as a committee member and had held their current position on the committee for three years. When their sport was in-season, club level volunteer administrators contributed a mean of 5.9 hours per week which was slightly less than their counterparts at the regional or state level (7.1 hours per week). Work/leisure continuum The four volunteer types which were evident in the open ended responses were of comparably equal size ranging from 92 cases (role dependees) to 115 cases (self-interested careerists). The volunteer types (see Table 1) were compared on their mean rating on a 9 point scale to the question of the degree to which they perceived that volunteering was more like work (1 point) or more like leisure (9 points). Using a one-way ANOVA there were significant differences between the volunteer types (F(3,405) = 3.38, p<.05). Using a post-hoc test (Duncan s multiple range test at p <.05) the self-interested leisure careerists (mean = 5.98; s.d. = 2.49) viewed volunteering as significantly more like leisure than both the obligeers (mean = 5.06; s.d. = 2.36) and the role dependees (mean = 5.10; s.d. = 2.63). The altruistic leisure careerists (mean = 5.61; s.d. = 2.51) were not significantly different from any other volunteer type. The extent to which the volunteer types viewed wlra97a.docx Page 7

8 Table 2 Factor loadings for the importance rating of the perceived leisure benefits (recreation experiences preferences) scale. Rotated Factor Loadings Factor (mean; s.d.) Scale items Personal rewards (3.30; 0.98) Learn more about things (3.34; 1.20) 0.79 Develop my skills and abilities (3.61; 1.23) 0.75 Learn what I am capable of (3.16; 1.36) 0.75 Experience new and different things (3.18; 1.28) 0.71 Think about my personal values (2.76; 1.34) 0.61 Do something creative (3.24; 1.23) Social rewards (3.69; 0.92) Be with friends (3.70; 1.11) 0.81 Be with others who enjoy the same things I do (3.90; 1.13) 0.72 Talk to new and varied people (3.62; 1.05) 0.65 Be with considerate people (3.19; 1.27) Relaxation (2.32; 1.04) Give my mind a rest (2.01; 1.24) 0.84 Release or reduce some built-up tensions (1.92; 1.19) 0.84 Have a change in my daily routine (2.86; 1.39) Social competence (2.72; 0.90) Do what others expect of me (2.17; 1.30) 0.76 Be in control of things that happen (3.19; 1.28) 0.63 Have others think highly of me for doing it (1.98; 1.11) 0.61 Help direct the activities of others (3.33; 1.23) Independence (2.10; 0.90) Be my own boss (2.15; 1.19) 0.64 Be away from the family for a while (1.54; 0.97) 0.58 Feel independent (2.49; 1.33) Enrichment (2.92; 1.16) Do something with my family (3.32; 1.50) 0.80 Grow and develop spiritually (2.32; 1.32) 0.53 Eigenvalue Variance explained (%) Cumulative % variance wlra97a.docx Page 8

9 their volunteer experience as more like work or more like leisure was further investigated by examining mean scores on the perceived leisure benefits sub-scales. Importance of perceived leisure benefits The mean and standard deviation scores for the perceived leisure benefits (recreation experience preferences scale) factors and individual scale items are shown in Table 2. The most important leisure benefit factor overall was social rewards (mean = 3.69) and the least important was the independence factor (mean = 2.10). Of the individual scale items, be with others who enjoy the same things I do (mean = 3.90), be with friends (mean = 3.70) were the most important leisure benefits of volunteering. Of little importance overall were benefits such as be away from the family for a while (mean = 1.54) and release or reduce some built up tensions (mean = 1.92). Two items had factor loadings of less than 0.5 on all factors and were excluded from further analysis. The items were observe other people (mean = 3.11; s.d. = 1.24) and get away from the usual demands of life (mean = 2.80; s.d. = 1.43). Perceived leisure benefits by volunteer type To examine differences between volunteer types on the perceived leisure benefits a MANOVA was computed using the six leisure benefits factors as the dependent variables and volunteer type as the independent variable. The model was significant (F = 4.21, p<.001) as were the univariate F-ratios for all six dependent variables (p <.05). Further examination of the differences was conducted using a series of one-way ANOVAs (see Table 3). The self-interested leisure careerists were distinguishable from the other volunteer types having rated all but the enrichment benefit as significantly more important than at least one other volunteer type (see Table 3). Clearly, the self-interested leisure careerists placed comparatively more importance on the personal and social rewards of volunteering than did the obligeers and role dependees. Social competence and independence were also important to the self-interested leisure careerists in comparison to the other volunteer types. The selfinterested leisure careerists were more distinguishable from the marginal volunteers than they were when compared to altruistic leisure careerists. The role dependees rated two thirds of the leisure benefits as significantly less important than all other volunteer types. However, due to their involvement of their children/family in the sport as the primary reason wlra97a.docx Page 9

10 they decided to volunteer initially, the role dependees rated the enrichment factor ( doing something with my family and grow and develop spiritually ) as significantly more important than the three other volunteer types. However, the low reliability coefficient (alpha = 0.46) for this factor brings the result into question. To further test whether the results supported the work / leisure continuum of volunteering, a one-way ANOVA using the mean benefits score as the dependent variable and volunteer type as the grouping variable was computed (see Table 3). A significant difference was found between volunteer type and mean benefits score (F = 5.25, p<.01). The self-interested leisure careerists (mean = 3.05) rated the overall importance of perceived leisure benefits as more important than the three other groups. The results supported the work / leisure continuum to the extent that the obligeers (mean = 2.68), role dependees (mean = 2.79) and altruistic leisure careerists (mean = 2.83) all placed less importance on the leisure benefits than the self-interested leisure careerists. Although not significantly different from one another for all volunteer types, the mean scores on perceived leisure benefits ranked from lowest to highest in the same order as the work / leisure continuum proposed here (see Figure 1). Table 3 Mean perceived leisure benefits factor scores by volunteer type. Mean scores Marginal Leisure careerists Role Self- Perceived leisure benefit Obligeers dependees Altruistic interested F (df 3,401) p < Personal rewards 3.04 a 3.21 a b Social rewards 3.54 a 3.46 a b Relaxation a b Social competence 2.63 a 2.54 a 2.67 a 2.98 b Independence 2.01 a 1.90 a 1.99 a 2.42 b Enrichment 2.68 a 3.33 b 2.91 a 2.82 a Mean of benefit scores 2.68 a 2.79 a 2.83 a 3.05 b a, b Groups significantly different from one another using Duncan s multiple range test (p <.05) Sociodemographic and behavioural characteristics by volunteer type The close association between parental responsibilities and volunteering in sport was evident in that there were significant gender and age group relationships with volunteer type. While the self-interested leisure careerists were most clearly distinguishable from the other volunteer types by virtue of importance that they wlra97a.docx Page 10

11 assigned to the perceived leisure benefits, the role dependees were most recognisable by their gender and agegroup characteristics. There was a significant association between the volunteer type and gender. The largest proportion of females were roles dependees in contrast with males in which role dependees were the smallest proportion of the volunteer type (chi square = 8.11, df = 3, p <.05). Role dependees accounted about one-third of the females in the sample (29.8%), and less than one-fifth of the males (18.5%). Volunteer types, other than role dependees more closely matched the overall sample of 2.2 males to one female. There was a significant association between the volunteer type and age group (chi square = 35.1, df = 12, p <.001). Of the role dependees almost two-thirds (62.9%) were aged years, a cohort likely to have children of sport playing age. The other volunteer types were distributed across the age-groups in more equal proportions except for selfinterested leisure careerists who were over-represented amongst the 60 years and older age-group. Obligeers were almost twice as likely (chi square = 8.53, df = 3, p <.05) to be volunteers at the club level (30.0%) than at the state or regional level of their sport (15.6%). The role dependee volunteers were significantly different from most other types of volunteers in terms of the years they had been involved in their sport (see Table 4). The role dependees had significantly less years membership of their sporting club or association than all other volunteer types and had been a committee member for a fewer number of years than the self-interested leisure careerists. The obligeers and role dependees also had held their current committee positions for significantly less years than the self-interested leisure careerists. There was no significant differences between volunteer type in the mean number of hours they put into administrating their sport, but the role dependees were significantly less actively involved in other roles such as playing, coaching and officiating in terms of mean hours per week (see Table 4). wlra97a.docx Page 11

12 Table 4 Mean behavioural characteristics by volunteer type. Mean scores Marginal Leisure careerists Role Self- Characteristic Obligeers dependees Altruistic interested F p < Years in this sport: Member of club or association (df 3,404) 9.9 a 7.3 b 10.4 a 11.2 a Member of committee (df 3,389) b a Current committee position (df 3,376) 2.8 b 2.4 b a Hours per week in this sport: Administration (df 3,381) NS Playing, coaching and officiating (df 3,356) 10.3 a 7.6 b 10.8 a 11.0 a a, b Groups significantly different from one another using Duncan s multiple range test (p <.05) DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Volunteerism is often thought of as an altruistic activity motivated by a desire to cater for the needs of other individuals or the goals of organisations or as self-interested activity for personal development or occupational reasons. To some extent this view was supported, however, a sense of obligation seems to be what motivates many individuals to initially decide to volunteer. Volunteers who felt obligated to volunteer (obligeers) could be distinguished from self-interested leisure careerists by levels of perceived leisure benefits and a perception of volunteering as being more like work than leisure. They could not be distinguished on the basis of more overt characteristics such as the years they had been members of their sporting organisations or the hours per week they put into their roles as administrators, coaches, officials or players. Social and personal rewards were important benefits for all types of volunteers but particularly for self-interested leisure careerists. These findings suggest that personal and social benefits (rewards) are an important factor in individuals developing their volunteer activity as a career-like endeavour. This is further evidenced by the tendency for obligeers to be found at club levels in sport, when compared with self-interested leisure careerists who were represented more noticeably at state levels and having been involved in their current committee positions for significantly more years. The prominence of feeling obligated to volunteer supported earlier findings on sports volunteers reported by Daly (1991). The volunteers categorised as role dependees were a characteristically different group. They rated most leisure benefits with low importance compared to other volunteer types and demonstrated gender and age wlra97a.docx Page 12

13 characteristics that also distinguished them from other volunteer types. Being female and aged years many role dependee volunteers were mothers of children involved in sport and were unlikely to describe their volunteer experience as leisurable. They may see their role as another domestic chore which they share unequally with their spouses. Furthermore, role dependees were the least behaviourally involved (years experience or hours per week) of the volunteer types, perhaps because they were constrained in the number of discretionary hours they had available to put into their own participation in sport. Alternatively, because of their children s participation and concomitant parental responsibilities they may have felt that there were not opportunities for them to participate as fully as players, coaches and officials who were not parents. As a type of marginal volunteers, the role dependees as a social group remind us that non-work obligations also play a part in motivations to volunteer. Unlike practitioners of serious leisure who may be pulled in two, if not three, directions (Stebbins, 1997b:125) among family, work and casual leisure, the role dependees apparently incorporate their volunteer activity in sports committees into their family (i.e., non-paid work) obligations and interests. The reader is reminded that the respondents who were categorised as role dependees through open and axial coding gave multiple reasons for initially volunteering. The decision was taken to give priority to the mention of family members. Other reasons were not explored at this stage of analysis. Role dependees may be exhibiting negotiation of a work-leisure-family nexus that combines non-paid work and family obligations with the benefits of volunteering in a sports club. As Thompson (1992:282) explained, among her Australian immersed tennis mums, tennis had become a major focus for the family and her life would be immersed in it as an extension of her domestic commitments. The social world and meaning of the voluntary role for people we ve labelled as role dependees deserves closer scrutiny using the qualitative methods from which serious leisure theory emerged. The study contributes to a better understanding the nature of volunteering in sport and provides evidence that individual volunteers cannot be neatly compartmentalised as either at work or at leisure. The findings support the extensive work on serious leisure by Stebbins (1979, 1982 and 1996) to the extent that the characteristics of serious leisure described by Stebbins (1982) closely resembled the self-interested leisure careerists identified in this study. This paper has differentiated among four types of volunteering. In so doing, it has redressed earlier difficulties of considering volunteering as either work or leisure. However, a limitation of the work / leisure continuum is its failure to differentiate between obligations associated with paid work and obligations associated with non-paid work or family. Obligation is implicated in the recruitment of both types of wlra97a.docx Page 13

14 marginal volunteers and the non-work related family obligations of role dependees in particular throws into relief the need for a reconceptualised continuum of work / leisure. Rather than conceiving of volunteering as one or the other, this article argues that for some volunteers it is a form of serious leisure, whereas for others it is another form of obligation. However, marginal volunteering does not share many of the characteristics of either serious or casual leisure. As Stebbins (1996: ) remarked substantial measures of coercion can at times obliterate for some people the leisure and volunteer components that other people find there. The nature of the volunteer experience seems to depend on the individual s initial motivation for volunteering and the perceived benefits of being a volunteer. Some previous research evidence (e.g., Pearce, 1993; Caldwell and Andereck, 1994; Phillips, 1982) suggests that volunteers motives for continuing are different to their motives for initially volunteering. Conceivably, the motives and perceived benefits of volunteers change over time as they become more involved with a particular organisation. There is the potential for tension within voluntary associations as volunteers come into an organisation for different reasons and derive different perceived benefits from that involvement. At the mesostructural level for some individuals (e.g., leisure careerists) the sports club becomes the hub of their social networks, lifestyles, small group and collective activity to form a distinctive social world (Stebbins, 1993). For other types of volunteers these mesostructural features are more attenuated or less salient. For role dependees, marginal volunteering may be an opportunity to bridge family roles with relatively autonomous expressions of leisure interests. As Thompson (1992:284) concluded [tennis] has formed an intricate web in which they can be wife, mother, sportswoman and experience some autonomy in leisure with minimal conflict. The authors see the need to further examine their existing data to determine whether the reasons individuals give for continuing to volunteer are similar to their motives for volunteering initially. The conceptual framework in this paper requires further elaboration and testing because there were limitations in the design of the original study. The work/leisure continuum was operationalised on one continuum and only measured globally. Leisure and work are multifaceted and should be conceptualised in a more complex and comprehensive manner. It is difficult to pose meaningful questions to respondents within a work / leisure framework without reference to non-work obligations. There were significant differences between some but not all of the volunteer types, indicating that the boundaries between the types are somewhat blurred. Data were collected from a sample of volunteer sport administrators and the findings may not apply equally to all sport volunteers (e.g., coaches and officials) or volunteers in sectors other than sport. There is a wlra97a.docx Page 14

15 need for refinement of some of the sub-scales in the perceived leisure benefits scale. Several sub-scales had less than four items and one sub-scale had a low reliability coefficient. Although treated as dependent and independent variables for the purposes of analysis, the quantitative and qualitative data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Responses to the open-ended question about why volunteer, were taken at face value as there were no follow-up or probing questions that could have been used to clarify answers and further refine the categorisation process. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated that while there is empirical support for the leisure conceptualisation of volunteering, a substantial proportion of volunteers in sport do not seem to be motivated by the benefits usually derived from leisure experiences. Existing conceptualisations of volunteering may not adequately capture the essence of what it is to be a volunteer nor the breadth of the volunteer experience. wlra97a.docx Page 15

16 REFERENCES Caldwell, L.L. & Andereck, K.L. (1994). Motives for initiating and continuing membership in a recreationrelated voluntary association. Leisure Sciences, 16: Daly, J.A. (1991). Volunteers in South Australian Sport: A Study, Canberra: Australian Sports Commission. Driver, B.L., Tinsley, H.E.A. & Manfredo, M.J. (1991). The Paragraphs About Leisure and Recreation Experience Preference scales: Two inventories designed to assess the breadth of perceived psychological benefits of leisure. In B.L. Driver, P.J. Brown, & G.L. Peterson, (Eds.). Benefits of Leisure (pp ). State College, PA: Venture. Henderson, K. (1981). Motivations and perceptions of volunteerism as a leisure activity. Journal of Leisure Research, 13(3), Henderson, K. (1984). Volunteerism as leisure. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 13(1), Kaplan, M. (1975). Leisure: Theory and Policy. New York: Wiley. Miles, M.B. & Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative Data Ananlysis. Califormia: Sage. Murnighan, J.K,, Kim, J.W., & Metzger, A.R. (1993). The volunteer dilemma. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38: Neuman, W. L. (1996). Social Research Methods, 2nd Ed., Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon. Parker, S. (1992). Volunteering as serious leisure. Journal of Applied Recreation Research, 17(1):1-11. Pearce, J.L. (1993). The Organizational Behavior of Unpaid Workers. London: Routledge. Phillips, M. (1982). Motivation and expectation in successful volunteerism. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 11: Stebbins, R.A. (1979). Amateurs: On the Margin Between Work and Leisure. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Stebbins, R.A. (1982). Serious leisure: A conceptual statement. Pacific Sociological Review, 25(2), Stebbins, R. A. (1993). Social world, life-style, and serious leisure: Toward a mesostructural analysis. World Leisure and Recreation, 35:1, Stebbins, R. A. (1996). Volunteering: A serious leisure perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 25:2, Stebbins, R. A. (1997a). Casual leisure: A conceptual statement. Leisure Studies, 16: Stebbins, R. A. (1997b). Serious leisure and well-being. In J.T. Haworth. Work, Leisure and Well-being. (pp ). London: Routledge. Thompson, S. (1992). Mum s tennis day : The gendered definition of older womens leisure. Society and Leisure, 15(1): Tedrick, T., & Henderson, K. (1989). Volunteers in leisure: A management perspective. Reston, VA: American Association of Leisure and Recreation. wlra97a.docx Page 16