Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering: New Global Statistical Standards Tested (Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies) [1st ed. 2021] 3030705455, 9783030705459

Citation preview

Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies An International Multidisciplinary Series

Riccardo Guidi Ksenija Fonović Tania Cappadozzi  Editors

Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering New Global Statistical Standards Tested

Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies An International Multidisciplinary Series Series Editors Paul Dekker Institute for Social Research, The Hague, The Netherlands Lehn Benjamin Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA

More information about this series at https://www.springer.com/series/6339

Riccardo Guidi  •  Ksenija Fonović Tania Cappadozzi Editors

Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering New Global Statistical Standards Tested

Editors Riccardo Guidi Department of Political Science University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

Ksenija Fonović Csv Lazio Rome, Italy

Tania Cappadozzi Division for Population Register Demographic and Living Conditions Statistics Istat, Rome, Italy

ISSN 1568-2579 Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies ISBN 978-3-030-70545-9    ISBN 978-3-030-70546-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book is an outcome of a strongly networked long-­term effort to advance the knowledge bases on volunteering in a comparative perspective and to mainstream third sector in institutional statistics. We hope it can serve as tool and as inspiration to the nascent multi-­stakeholder community of volunteering measurement champions, with whom we keep constantly open passionate dialogue and punctilious discussions. The initial infrastructure for the start of the inter-­institutional partnership that allowed for the implementation of the ILO module in Italy was granted by the EVMP (European Volunteer Measurement Project) and by MESV (Misurazione Economica e Sociale del Volontariato) projects. An important venue for advancing this dialogue between countries and for bridging across disciplines and cultures have been the ISTR conferences in Siena (2012), Münster (2014), Stockholm (2016) and Amsterdam (2018). The initial ground for this collaborative book project was the volume we edited (Guidi et al. 2016) that involved the first group of academic and statistical authors that believed in our idea and supported it with generosity and excellence, confirming their engagement for the current volume. We greatly appreciate our authors for their trust and commitment. We acknowledge with gratefulness the help of John Wilson and Megan Haddock, who read the first drafts of some chapters and provided helpful critical insight and sound advice. Finally, our sincere thanks go to two anonymous reviewers and the series editors Lehn Benjamin and Paul Dekker: their comments and indications gave us excellent stimuli to take a significant qualitative step forward between the first and the second versions of the book. With our entire community of knowledge, with volunteers with whom we share a vision of a world that strives for justice and equality, and with the colleagues in our home institutions (Department of Political Science – University of Pisa, CSV Lazio and Istat), we are indebted to the fertile environment of discussions and

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mutual help. This book is our attempt to contribute our bit to advancing the knowledge on volunteering as an essential element of democracy and of human development.

Reference Guidi, R., Fonović, K., & Cappadozzi, T. (2016). Volontari e attività volontarie in Italia. Antecedenti, impatti, esplorazioni. Bologna: il Mulino.

Contents

1 Common Core and Variety of Volunteering: Testing International Standards in Italy������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Riccardo Guidi, Ksenija Fonović, and Tania Cappadozzi Part I Accounting for Volunteering and Its Varieties. A Global Challenge 2 The Commonalities of Volunteering: How Consensus Global Definitions Accommodate Regional Variations and Why It Is Important to Use Them ������������������������������������������������������������������   21 Lester M. Salamon 3 Varieties and Changes of Volunteering: Challenges for an International Standard on Voluntary Action ����������������������������   47 Riccardo Guidi, Jacqueline Butcher, Bernard Enjolras, Jacob Mwathi Mati, John Wilson, and Ying Xu 4 Different Contexts, Different Data: A Review of Statistical Sources on Volunteering and Some Steps Beyond��������������������������������   79 Vladimir Ganta 5 Lessons Learned in Applying the International Official Statistical Standards to Volunteering: The Italian Experience ����������������������������  101 Tania Cappadozzi, Sabrina Stoppiello, Stefania Cuicchio, and Ksenija Fonović Part II Volunteering in Italy. A Test-Bed for the Global Statistical Standards 6 Heterogeneity of Context, Varieties of Volunteering: The Italian Case in an International Perspective����������������������������������  129 Riccardo Guidi 7 Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct Volunteers��������������������������������������  157 Tania Cappadozzi and Ksenija Fonović vii

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8 Volunteer Work and Its Interrelationship with the Labor Market����������������������������������������������������������������������������  191 Tania Cappadozzi, Laura Cialdea, Manuela Michelini, Marco Musella, Giancarlo Ragozini, and Pietro Scalisi 9 A Late-ModernTransformation of the Motivations to Volunteer? A Social Perspective on Italy ������������������������������������������  219 Riccardo Guidi and Lorenzo Maraviglia Part III Boosting the Research on Antecedents and Impacts of Volunteering 10 The Antecedents to Volunteering in Italy: Toward a Complexity-Driven Perspective ����������������������������������������������������������  243 Riccardo Guidi and Lorenzo Maraviglia 11 Volunteering and Trust: New Insights on a Classical Topic����������������  267 Lorenzo Maraviglia, Loredana Sciolla, and John Wilson 12 Learning Democratic Attitudes and Skills: Politics and Volunteer Engagement ��������������������������������������������������������������������  287 Roberto Biorcio and Tommaso Vitale 13 Volunteering and Subjective Well-being������������������������������������������������  309 Terri Mannarini, Alessia Rochira, Silvia Montecolle, and Eleonora Meli 14 Volunteering in a Complexity-Driven Perspective. Methodological and Substantial Lessons for a New Research Agenda��������������������������������������������������������������������  327 Riccardo Guidi, Ksenija Fonović, and Tania Cappadozzi Statistical Appendix ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  347 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  355

Chapter 1

Common Core and Variety of Volunteering: Testing International Standards in Italy Riccardo Guidi, Ksenija Fonović, and Tania Cappadozzi

1.1  The Varieties of Volunteering: A Global Puzzle Scholars have worked for years to find a universally valid definition of volunteering. Though a significant degree of agreement has been achieved, it has not been enough to build a solid foundation for comparative research and international policy action. For a long time, one of the most serious problems has been the lack of an official measurement protocol that enabled comparisons globally without losing the full consideration of the local peculiarities of volunteering. The ILO Manual for the measurement of volunteer work released in 2011 claimed to provide a reasonable workable solution. We tested it in Italy, a country famous for the diversity of its local contexts. This chapter presents the Volume and the rationale behind it. This section recalls some problematic questions an international standard on volunteering must tackle to be appropriate and successful (Sect. 1.1.1), introduces the ILO Manual for the measurement of volunteer work (Sect. 1.1.2) and presents the frame of our test (Sect. 1.1.3). In the second section we illustrate the most relevant traits of the context where the ILO Manual was tested (Italy), while in the third section we outline the value of the Volume and present its structure. The Chapter results from a strong and ongoing collaboration between the authors. However, Riccardo Guidi can be considered as the author of Sects. 1.1 (except 1.1.2) and 1.2; Tania Cappadozzi and Ksenija Fonović as the authors of Sects. 1.1.2 and 1.3. R. Guidi () Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] K. Fonović Csv Lazio, Rome, Italy T. Cappadozzi Division for Population Register, Demographic and Living Conditions Statistics, Istat, Rome, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_1

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1.1.1  The Challenge of Defining Volunteering The international literature generally refers to volunteering as the ensemble of human activities (time, labour, expertise) an individual provides to beneficiaries (single agents outside the household or systems, i.e. “causes”) without remuneration, on the basis of free will and usually through nonprofit organizations (Bekkers, 2008; Cnaan et  al., 1996; Dekker & Halman, 2003; Handy et  al., 2000; Hustinx et al., 2010; Musick & Wilson, 2008; Wilson, 2000, 2012). Things appear however more complicated when viewed up close. Identifying an act as volunteering is somehow a matter of degree along a continuum (Cnaan et al., 1996; Snyder & Omoto, 2008; Wilson, 2012). The boundaries between what is volunteering and what is not are indeed “permeable” (Hustinx et  al., 2010, p.  410). Especially from a global perspective, these boundaries appear heavily dependent on local social contexts. Volunteering cannot be “viewed in isolation from the wider social and cultural context”, and it largely depends on “the way the societies are organized, how they allocate social responsibilities” (Anheier & Salamon, 1999, p. 43). The real meaning of the constitutive elements of the proposed generally accepted definitions of volunteering (that embody the notions of freedom, kinds of obligation, boundaries of household and family, etc.) is strained by local cultural, material and institutional factors. The concept of “free will” necessarily contrasts with local interpretations of what constitutes the mandatory activities of life; “gratuitousness” is set against the culturally bound understandings of remuneration of work on the labour market; the orientation to others (individual beneficiaries, communities, society) is opposed to actions driven by particular interests (homo oeconomicus settings, family contexts, etc.), and the “organizational attribute” contrasts with other organized ways of providing assistance or advocating for a cause (Welfare State, electoral system, etc.). This complicates the validity of global definitions of volunteering, which require univocal standards and bright clear lines, at least for measurement purposes. It is often not so easy to distinguish between activities carried out for the general rather than for the private interest; sometimes the two converge. The answer is often provided not by the substance but by the nature of the institutional context in which the activity takes place, such as a community organization, a for-profit company, an informal group of people, etc., which is clearly locally shaped and may be affected by legal constructions. As Chap. 3 discusses in detail, there can be several lines of conflict between an international standard definition and local understandings of volunteering in the culturally and socially disparate regions of the world. The “social embeddedness” of volunteering (Hustinx et al., 2010; Polanyi, 1977, 2001) places severe limits on the feasibility of developing an international standard and a universally valid definition capable of supporting comparative research and global policy. Nevertheless, a

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global standard is necessary for overcoming methodological nationalism, and it appears possible as long as its design is not considered an aseptic formal operation. In order to be actually founded, accepted and useful, the international standard should complement context-dependent meanings, understandings, regulations and practices of volunteering. It should never, overtly or covertly, aim to overshadow local values. The alternative is to risk a flattening-down of the phenomenon that would obfuscate local differences and defeat the purpose of developing comparative data in the first place. Global statistical standards should embrace and encourage the adoption of what we call a “glocal” approach: that is, to conciliate the universal definition of volunteering with its local varieties to encourage both the comparative study of volunteering and the consideration of its peculiarities. Indeed, it seems that the most significant characterizing trait of volunteering at the global level is the variety of forms it takes, which result from being so embedded into local patterns. Although we advocate for a full consideration of the context characteristics for a better understanding of volunteering, we need to be aware of the risks of adopting a radically localistic approach. The consequence of giving primary and exclusive consideration to the locally specific traits of volunteering is the lack of standardized datasets, which are a necessary pre-requisite for methodologically robust comparative analyses. So far, academia, statistical institutions and professionals around the world have mostly implemented measures using locally based definitions that capture peculiar conceptualizations of volunteering. This has generated significant amounts of single-nation surveys, which alone represent an achievement in the recognition of volunteering. But, at the same time, this has made the field of international comparative studies on volunteering structurally underdeveloped. Importantly, the lack of standardized data on volunteering has meant that volunteering has been left out of the global policy agenda. This is clear, for example, with respect to the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNGA, 2015) where the role of volunteers in the development agenda is mentioned as an afterthought. Data limitations made it difficult for volunteer support groups to make the case for being significantly included in the development agenda and the UN strategic design is weaker for it.

1.1.2  N  ew Global Statistical Standards on Volunteering Emerge Following on the seminal Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, which released the first set of comparative national data in the early 1990s, efforts to find global statistical standards on volunteering have recently intensified. The major breakthrough came in 2011 with the publication of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO, 2011) designed to capture both organization-based (also named organized, formal) and

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direct (informal, individual) volunteering. The document, developed by the institution responsible for the definition of standards for the measurement of work, in all its forms, set a definitional and measurement standard that placed volunteering within the context of unpaid work. The definition it adopted in this context is practical and empirical in its approach, geared towards the deployment by labour statisticians who are not experts on volunteering themselves but are, rather, interested in understanding how residents in their countries spend their productive time. The recommendations made in the ILO Manual were improved upon, revised and adopted by the 2013 International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in their Resolution on unpaid work (ILO, 2013), which was needed to fully legitimize the concept among statistical groups. Recognition by the ICLS (ILO, 2013) enabled the further adoption of the definition elsewhere within the UN statistical system. The United Nations Statistical Commission, which sets the standards for the measurement and reporting on national economic accounting, now includes this definition of volunteer work as part and parcel of the 2018 new UN Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UN TSE Sector Handbook)1 which provides guidance for government statistics agencies to report separately on this set of institutions and activities. At the same time, the standard is also being introduced into revisions of the Time Use Survey standards, a uniquely important global – albeit not obligatory to implement – source of social statistics. Thanks to the ILO and UN initiatives, new official global statistical standards on volunteering are now available. Their potential is clear: they have opened up an epochal path towards the production of standardized data and comparative analyses on volunteering. Nevertheless, they still have to overcome two main obstacles. First, they are still largely unknown by the multi-professional global “community of practice” working on volunteering, including scholars, statisticians, practitioners and policy makers. Second, only extensive use on the ground in different regions of the world can actually prove their capacity to capture the common core of voluntary action in different cultural contexts. The challenge that these new international standards must meet is to prove their ability to successfully reconcile the contradicting pressures between the rigid and clear-cut statistically operable definitions, which are imperative for making the data usable in a comparative perspective, and elasticity sufficient to capture and reflect the nuanced ways in which volunteering is expressed around the world. Beyond the mere head-count, the issue at stake is: Can the resulting data further develop our knowledge on the varieties of volunteering across the globe?

1  This Handbook revises the 2002 UN Handbook on the Non-Profit Institutions in the System of National Accounts.

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1.1.3  A  Step Forward: Illustrating, Critically Addressing and Testing the New Global Standards With the new global standards in place, it is important that they be tested and that the results of these tests be analysed and illustrated. It is also urgent because, although explanatory documentation on the global standards and statistical reports on data are available, the literature is missing extended independent analyses which have dealt with definitional and methodological issues and with the assessment of the potential of the results to advance knowledge. Filling this gap is the mission of this Volume. Unique in its genre, the Volume addresses the methodological challenges and substantial potentials of the new global statistical standards on volunteering. Beyond illustrating and critically assessing the global standards, this Volume shows how the ILO Manual and the UN Handbook can be successfully implemented into national statistics and which new advancements in the understanding of contemporary volunteering they allow. It thus aspires to contribute both to the methodological and to the substantial debate on volunteering. Fulfilling this mission requires an articulated work. The first part of the Volume is dedicated to the methodological challenges. The chapters introduce scholars, statisticians, practitioners and policy makers to the international standards and key elements and tensions in their definition and bring readers up to speed on the most recent advancements. These chapters also discuss the opportunities that these standards have opened for those working on volunteering and the challenges that exist to their implementation by national statistics agencies. The tensions between the global standards and differences in the local interpretations of volunteering underlie the content of the chapters of Part I, which illustrate the processes and the methodological choices made in the implementation of the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) in Italy, a highly heterogeneous country. The substantial chapters of Parts II and III of this Volume use the internationally standardized data resulting from the implementation of the ILO Manual in Italy to tackle several topics of social research on volunteering. Namely, they focus on the characteristics, motivations, antecedents and impacts of Italian volunteering in a comparative perspective. These chapters are inspired by the “social embeddedness theory” of volunteering, and, on the whole, they contribute to its development (see Chap. 10). The “social embeddedness theory” states that volunteering leans against the long-term characteristics of the context in which it occurs and is sensitive to context changes (Hustinx et  al., 2010; see Chap. 6). On the basis of this general assumption, we work under the hypothesis that today volunteering mirrors the societal trends towards complexity. In other words, we suppose that complexity is a basic and unavoidable characteristic of volunteering in current societies and suggest that this trait feeds a new perspective to approach volunteering (complexity-driven perspective). At this stage of nonprofit studies (Ma & Konrath, 2018), developing such a perspective is important because while complexity is generally recognized as a key feature of our societies, volunteering is still often considered as a homogeneous set

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of activities, a simple “yes/no” practice to address in the questionnaires, a dummy variable in the datasets. Volunteers are frequently compared by policy makers to an “army” or a “people” – metaphors which dull the plural and osmotic nature of contemporary voluntary action. This way to approach volunteering and volunteers risks twisting reality and impedes a full understanding of what volunteering actually is today, which are its drivers, and how it impacts society. Voluntary action has evolved in the last decades towards complexity. Today different traditions (or types or models or styles) of volunteering appear to be coexisting in the same context, and each of these encompasses a multiplicity of practices (Guidi, 2021). For example, people can volunteer as active and stable members of different value-based nonprofit organizations which interact with the political system (active membership tradition) (Dekker, 2018; Enjolras & Strømsnes, 2018; Meijs & Hoogstad, 2001). Individuals can be active in specific, episodic and spatially circumscribed volunteering projects, programmes, initiatives, events, etc. promoted by nonprofit, public or for-profit organizations which do not require either organizational affiliation or any promise of an engagement of the volunteer in the future (programme-based tradition) (Cnaan & Handy, 2005; Hustinx, 2010; Meijs & Brudney, 2007; Meijs & Hoogstad, 2001). People can also volunteer directly, without any organizational intermediation, as a way to respond to moral and cultural obligations and/or as a reciprocity strategy in community circles (direct tradition) (Appe et al., 2017; Einolf et al., 2016; Fowler & Mati, 2019), or can coordinate their voluntary action by themselves in highly informal ways to tackle emergent problems which are not addressed enough by institutions, market or existing civil society organizations (organize it yourselves tradition) (Kousis, 2017; Simsa et al., 2019; Wuthnow, 1994). A complexity-driven perspective on volunteering based on the “social embeddedness” theory is also necessary because the potential dependence of the different varieties of volunteering on the factors which make current societies so heterogeneous has been little investigated. As a result, for example, we have a good body of knowledge about which social features facilitate volunteering on the whole, but we know almost nothing about the specific drivers of the different traditions (or types or models or styles) of volunteering or about their sub-domains; we know that volunteering is positively correlated to well-being, trust and political participation, but we are still not sure if all the traditions (or types or models or styles) of volunteering follow the same pattern. It also appears urgent to reconsider the structural factors which differentiate current societies and to explore if and how different traditions of volunteering meet the demand for activation of different groups in the society better than others. One important aspect in this is the connections between different modalities of volunteering (as members of structured third sector associations, or individually in the neighbourhood, or as part of a religious path, or occasionally in events) and the changing class structure of a rapidly developing world. Is it still adequate, for example, to refer to organized volunteering as a typically middle-class phenomenon, when the middle class has changed so much in the last decades and is today highly differentiated?

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1.2  Italian Heterogeneity: A Substantial Test-Case for the Global Statistical Standards The Volume takes Italy as an illustrative case that offers global value. The Italian case is relevant here for two intertwined reasons. First, because careful revision and preparation of the survey questionnaire allowed to align the new statistical standards with the national understanding of what constitutes volunteering. This was made possible by a strong partnership between academics, statisticians and third sector professionals, who allied towards this end and collaborated from the very beginning. This alignment results from a “glocal” solution to several definitional puzzles, such as delimiting the exact distinction between the family help and direct (informal) voluntary action. One of the most problematic questions to tackle in Italy was where to mark the boundary between the household and the community, particularly with respect to the issue of caring for grandchildren who do not live in the same household. Taking care of one’s own grandchildren is an integral (and indeed dominant) part of the family welfare in Italy. To consider this volunteering, univocally intended as a free-will engagement for general interest, would be unthinkable for Italians. Chapter 5 details how recent advancements in the statistical definitions enabled Italy to correctly represent this boundary between the voluntary work and the family work. This makes the Italian case an exceptionally useful reference for numerous countries in the world that have a similarly traditional understanding of family ties. Second, Italy is characterized by such wide domestic diversity that testing the standards in a complexity-driven perspective here can be informative also for scholars, statisticians, practitioners and policy makers interested in developing a better understanding of the varieties of volunteering in other countries. Italy can be thus considered an ideal model for countries approaching a first-time implementation of volunteering statistical standards.

1.2.1  Italy, or Rather Italies: A Glimpse of a Mosaic Country Of course, all the countries in the world are complex to some extent. Some are however more heterogeneous than others. Undoubtedly, Italy is a peculiarly complex country due to the domestic territorial fragmentations which have been created by history and reinvigorated by recent trends. What we now call Italy is an ancient and densely populated country (four million people lived in the peninsula in the fifth century BC) which results from a very long, complicated and incomplete process of unification. After the Romans (who were able to provisionally unify current Italy only by giving local populations a high degree of autonomy), the peninsula has had innumerable local states, some very small, up to 1861 when Italy was established as an institutional entity through a non-peaceful unification process led by a Northern regional kingdom. The

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establishment of Italy, however, did not translate immediately into the existence of Italians, as people. While contemporary biologists confirm that Italians do not exist (Sazzini et al., 2020), it is more relevant to our case that in the last 150 years historians and social scientists have often shown that Italy is structurally plural (“Italies”), an enigmatic “mosaic” of territorial differences which is difficult to compose (Salvati & Sciolla, 2016). Italy stands out for its domestic fragmentation, as settled down through history. Italy today is a relatively big country in terms of population (about 60 million inhabitants), one of the ten major economies in the world and a global cultural influencer, but it is relatively small in terms of surface (about 301,340  km). Far from being uniform, it is an assembly of peculiar local systems unified by a fragile national institutional frame. The significance of local patterns in Italy corresponds to the structural weakness of the nation state, which was late in being established, has been contested since its beginning and is largely criticized for being ineffective. In Italy, differences at the family and individual levels are intertwined and work their way up to territorial divides and peculiarities, which have not been balanced by the State. Considering this domestic differentiation, the Italian context appears to be a good case at the international level for testing the international standards of volunteering in a complexity-driven perspective. We are not however the first to take Italy and its heterogeneity as a telling case at global level, as described below.

1.2.2  T  he Heterogeneity of the Italian Context in the Literature on (Un)Civicness and Social Participation Non-Italian readers interested in civic action and social participation probably know Italy and its territorial divides through the pages of some influential US works (see Chap. 6). In the well-known opening pages of his ground-breaking masterpiece, Robert Putnam describes his imaginary one-day travel from Seveso in Northern Italy to Pietrapertosa in the South as: less impressive for the distance spanned than for the historical contrasts between the point of departure and the destination (Putnam, 1993, p. 4).

While Seveso and its world-famous ecological disaster (1976) represented the late-­modern “risk society” (Beck, 1992), travelling towards the South of Italy in the same years “was to return centuries into the past”; many people in Pietrapertosa were daily pressed by the absence of running water, reminding him: as it had been throughout much of Europe three or four centuries earlier (ibid.).

Among contemporary social and political scientists, Putnam has likely provided the most influential picture of the manifestations of Italy’s regional differences. His focus was on the institutions of a functioning democracy and citizen participation,

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but the implications are relevant for the study of the third sector, volunteering, economic development and many other fields. Putnam was not the only US scholar to have tackled “the enigma of the Italian diversity” (Sciolla, 1997, p. 27) and to have taken Italy as a model of (un)civicness. Banfield (1958) pointed to the so-called amoral familism as the cause of the backwardness of Southern Italy. Almond and Verba (1963) identified “parochialism” as a trait of the Italian political culture, and La Palombara (1964) invited his readers to consider Italy as the international champion of “clientelism”. As a result of these representations, Italy is widely considered as a country divided between the more civic, efficient and developed Centre-North and the un-civic, inefficient and backward South. Though influential, these representations of the heterogeneities of Italy have some limits. According to the critics, they have flattened the real complexities of the country by selecting, emphasizing and generalizing the relevance of some limited traits (Sciolla, 1997, pp. 20–30). The famous US studies deal with the Italian territories as if they were internally homogeneous, but indeed they are not (Rokkan, 1964, p. 677; Sciolla, 2004, pp. 35–37). Beyond the North-South divide, at least since the 1970s, relevant territorial differences within the North and within the South have been reported (Becattini, 1975; Bottazzi, 1990; Catanzaro, 1979). Those works also neglected informal reciprocity in Southern Italy (Bagnasco, 2006, pp.18–19), a resource which plays a relevant role in this area. More generally, the aforementioned images of Italy are built on an interpretative model which separates and contrasts modernity and tradition. According to the classic theory of modernization (Martinelli, 2005, pp. 28–53), the analysis of Italy is shaped by the “backwardness myth” (Agnew, 2002) which is often applied to the stereotyped divide between global North and global South countries. The reality, however, appears indeed to be much more complex. In the last 40  years, Italian sociology has rather emphasized non-conflictual relationships between “traditional” and “modern” elements in this country. Their intertwining, rather than their conflict, has been proven to be decisive for the economic development and the social and institutional performances of the “Third Italy”, an area spanning the North-Eastern and the Centre-Northern regions (Bagnasco, 1977, 1988; Bagnasco & Oberti, 1998; Trigilia, 1986). In this vein, the role of the Catholic Church as a traditionalist force which contributed to keeping Southern Italy backward should be reconsidered, especially after the progressive directions indicated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) that moved communities towards more voluntary action through new or renewed organizations (Caritas being the most internationally renowned example). Although we agree with Putnam that Italy offers a telling case of civic divides, our Volume adopts a more nuanced inquiry into the local heterogeneities of this country by considering the internal variety of the voluntary sector and by identifying the web of environmental factors that, intertwined to family and individual level factors, influence the development of different forms of voluntary action.

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1.2.3  The Heterogeneity of the Italian Context in This Volume In a global perspective, the Italian complexity is indeed not exceptional. The coexistence of, and intertwining between, different layers of “tradition” and “modernity” appears to be one of the most usual patterns of development, and many other countries in the world have a wide and articulated territorial heterogeneity within their borders. For this reason, the Italian test of the international standards on volunteering can be considered as a model for those countries in the world which have a similar or higher level of domestic heterogeneity. Each of these countries, of course, has its own peculiar complexities which require specific analyses. However, testing the international standards on volunteering in Italy in a way that fully recognizes the complexities of the country, together with those of volunteering, can offer an interesting mirror and contribute to renewing the consideration of volunteering in different regions in the world. At the same time, the richness of solid data on the regional level in Italy can help countries with small populations to find benchmark values on a more adequate scale. Italy can be conceived as a “mosaic” of small sub-national entities unified but weakly coordinated. Fully accounting for its different tesserae is not easy. We can begin from the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) used by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. NUTS allows to disaggregate each member state in four hierarchical territorial levels (NUTS 0, Country level; NUTS 1, Macro-region level; NUTS 2, Region level; NUTS 3, Sub-regional level) which are generally based on existing national administrative subdivisions and are complemented by Local Administrative Units (LAU) at a lower scale. This classification enables cross-border statistical comparisons on phenomena that are often variable at sub-country level within the EU countries. In Italy NUTS 1 entities – the biggest tesserae of the mosaic – are five (North-­ West, North-East, Centre, South, Islands); NUTS 2 and 3 correspond, respectively, to the administrative level of Regions and Provinces (Fig. 1.1). The governments of the 20 regions in the Italian Republic are directly elected by the people. Five of these (the Islands, Sicily and Sardinia, and the Northern Aosta Valley, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino–Alto Adige–Süd Tirol, which is

Fig. 1.1  NUTS Level 1 (Macro regions), Level 2 (Regions) and Level 3 (Provinces) of Italy

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furthermore composed by two autonomous Provinces) have a broader amount of autonomy than the other 15 regions due to officially recognized cultural and historical peculiarities. Under the Italian Constitution, each Region is however an autonomous institution with defined powers which have increased in the last 20  years. Following the 2001 Constitutional reform, Italian regions have exclusive or highly relevant competencies in several crucial policy fields such as welfare, health, education, territorial planning and tourism. With the exception of the Aosta Valley, each Region (NUTS 2) is divided into a number of Provinces (NUTS 3) which are composed by smaller but relevant Local Administrative Units (LAU) – the municipalities (about 7900). Since the 1990s the role of the latter has grown in administrative and political terms. The municipalities are today the public institution which is closest to the citizens. Their governments are directly elected by the people, and they daily manage relevant functions in numerous fields, from public transports to civil registry, from social services to preschools, civil protection and waste. One of the most relevant consequences of this structure is that Italian contemporary decision-making in several policy fields is highly fragmented. This fragmentation is only relatively compensated by the State-level action, resulting  – for example – in different regional (NUTS 1; NUTS 2) welfare models as well as sub-­ regional (NUTS 3, LAU) varieties of them (Ascoli & Pavolini, 2015; Bifulco & Centemeri, 2007). Far from being conjunctural, the institutional fragmentation is rather a historical trait of Italy. The current Italian institutional structure is contradictory: the Italian State has been later in its formation than others in Europe, but it has rapidly become extended and expensive, all the while remaining structurally weak and ineffective (Cassese, 1998). Italy experiences what has been called “the paradox of a statism without stateness” (Bifulco, 2011) – that is a governing tradition based on hierarchical logics and top-down structures which has not really reduced the fragmentation, incoordination and particular interests that are typical of the history of the peninsula. Such institutional (dis)order is significantly reflected in the highly fragmented but highly influential normative framework regulating organized volunteering and contributes to shape local and sectoral varieties of volunteering. Historical dynamics significantly shape the territorial heterogeneities of Italy well beyond administration issues. The millenary and tumultuous Italian history is characterized by multiple invasions, different cultural hegemonies and concomitant independent, semi-independent and dependent local bodies in the peninsula. What today we call Italy is indeed a “mosaic” composed by a high number of tesserae which took a very long time to be integrated in a State. The fragmentation of Italy is deeper and more articulated than the mere North-South distinction. Southern Italy has been a separate entity from the Centre-North for almost a millennium, but historians highlighted the domestic differentiations of this area in demographic, social and economic terms over time (e.g. Aymard, 1971). A similar condition applies to the Papal States, which controlled Central Italy for centuries, while the Centre-North of the peninsula has been always highly fragmented.

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There are several current territorial divides, which result from long-term history and more recent developments. Beyond the North-South fracture accounted for by Robert Putnam and tackled by a long domestic debate about the Questione Meridionale (Southern Question) since the Italian unification (1861), scholars and policy analysts have accounted for further systemic territorial differentiations (Barbagallo, 2011; Barbagallo, 2017; Gramsci, 1966; Villari, 1875). Some have proposed to distinguish the North-West area (NUTS 1), developed in the twentieth century through the conventional Fordist model, from the so-called Third Italy (North-East, Tuscany and Marche) based on small enterprises and high level of social and institutional integration (Bagnasco, 1977). More recently, a structural fracture emerged forcefully between central/urban areas and marginal rural “inner areas” (aree interne) “characterized by their distance from the main service centres (education, health and mobility)” (ENRD, 2019). Inner areas are present in North, Centre and South alike, with same characteristics. These heterogeneities are reflected in the spatial distribution of many and relevant demographic, social, economic, cultural and institutional indicators. As Chap. 6 of this Volume shows in detail, the distribution of nearly all the features which are considered to affect voluntary action (church attendance, educational attainments, numerosity of nonprofit organizations, etc.) is spatially unbalanced in Italy. Beyond the North-South divide – a key aspect of the Italian fragmentation – further territorial differences at NUTS 2 or more detailed level exist. The working hypothesis of this Volume is that volunteering in highly complex countries (i.e. having a high degree of territorial heterogeneities which combine with family and individual level differences) is highly complex. We expect that the territorial heterogeneities affect it and make voluntary action at the country level (NUTS 0) a mosaic composed by different tesserae which deserve a specific attention. Italian heterogeneity is thus supposed to systematically influence several traits of volunteering (e.g. rate and types of volunteering, hours volunteered, motivations to volunteer), net of individual and family characteristics. The complexity-driven perspective we use to approach Italy is reflected in how we worked on the volunteering data, aware that neither Italy nor Italian volunteering is a monolithic menhir, but rather a dry-stone wall made of local rock. Local for most of volunteering means radically local, of the immediate community. The data available do not allow us to segment the view to this detail, which would anyhow miss the mark. Our objective instead was to single out the lines of continuity of volunteering patterns that can help us to tease out ecological factors that, in interplay with family and individual level features, contribute to shape the propensity of territorial units below the country level to express volunteering types differentiated by degree, intensity, sectoral vocation or demographics of volunteers. All contributions working on the ILO Manual volunteering data present first the national level analysis and then check if relevant patterns emerge on a lower territorial scale. The framework for the territorial analysis is based on statistical units that correspond to the Italian institutional framework (NUTS; see above). In their analyses, the chapters of this Volume refer to the maps of Fig. 1.1, which offer the initial compass for better understanding the territorial components of the

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Italian domestic heterogeneity. And although countries of the world are, like “unhappy families” of Tolstoyan memory, all different, we believe that the methodological approach this Volume takes can provide inspiration and benchmarking points to deepen the knowledge of volunteering as a locally shaped and therefore composite phenomenon, a twisted cord woven of multiple yards.

1.3  G  enerating and Using Data on Volunteering: The Values of the Volume This Volume is one whole, with chapters developing a coherent continuum and building on each other. Nevertheless, each chapter can also be read as a stand-alone study for those seeking to delve deeper into a specific issue. Different readership constituencies – scholars, statisticians, practitioners and policy makers – can thus compose their individual reading path. Statisticians who want to read up on the standards to be adopted and their practical implementation can find useful ideas in Part I and in the Statistical Annex. Scholars can follow the lines of their interest among the many aspects detailed in the Volume, both methodological, on the antecedents and the impacts of volunteering. Practitioners can find their work and its importance here illustrated, recognizing themselves in the in-depth descriptions offered by the Volume, overcoming fears that the application of the proposed standards for an economic evaluation would cause the loss of the social importance of their action. Finally, policy makers can come to understand the real, reliable and comparable numbers that describe volunteering and hopefully realize the actual value that an investment in volunteering generates for society.

1.3.1  A Partnership-Based Volume The original contribution to the research methodology and to the analysis of volunteering that this Volume provides is the result of a national and international level partnership among official statistical institutions, academia and third sector practitioners. Each group brought expertise and resources to the table that ensured the development of robust data, but also ensured that these data would indeed be accepted and used by the stakeholders involved. In terms of process, the partnership represents a model for the implementation of global statistical standards on volunteering which we hope can inspire others in their efforts to implement and make these standards appropriate to their own contexts. The Volume offers practical illustrations of how cross-sector partnerships can be employed to effectively implement the global standards into national official statistics. The partnership allows the Volume to include a more holistic set of

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perspectives, voices and levels of expertise that can be appreciated and used by scholars, statisticians, third sector organizations and policy makers. In substantive terms, the partnership has generated significant innovations, the root one being the pioneering of the 2013 ILO definition of volunteering as adopted by the ICLS and the implementation of the ILO and UN standards for measurement without misrepresenting or glossing over national peculiarities. Furthermore, additional rich data on several key aspects of volunteering research were collected. These include the growing diversity of organizations and platforms offering volunteering opportunities, information on who volunteers in more than one organizational setting, motivations to volunteer and perceived impacts of volunteering. All the while, priority was granted to safeguarding the high quality of data with large sample sizes and reliable sub-national data. Finally, this partnership generated high-­ value interdisciplinary analyses by involving a diverse group of authors, each highly qualified in their respective fields. The Volume takes full advantage of this unparalleled body of empirical data to shed important new light on how global standards can be implemented in a complex country and on the advancements they can offer to the understanding of the varieties of volunteering. As a result, readers are offered a Volume that: • Illustrates and critically addresses the new emerging global statistical standards • Tests the global statistical standards on volunteering in a complexity-driven perspective in a highly significant country • Accounts for the partnership-based process of implementation of the global standards into the official statistics of a complex country • Contains data standardized to the new statistical definition of volunteering (UN, 2018) • Uses the new global statistical standards for developing our knowledge of volunteering, namely, in better accounting for its characters, antecedents and impacts.

1.3.2  The Structure of the Volume Part I of the Volume (Accounting for Volunteering and Its Varieties: A Global Challenge) outlines the theoretical and the methodological challenge, which is to assess the new global statistical standards on volunteering against its variations on the ground and to demonstrate the value of these standards for the advancement of knowledge on volunteering. It collects contributions that constitute the basic compass for statistical institutes approaching the measurement of volunteering. These are equally of value for policy actors on the international level with a stake in advancing the visibility of citizens’ contributions to sustainable development objectives and collaborative governance in the public interest, and for researchers of volunteering working in a comparative perspective. Written by the official statistical institution personnel, academics and third sector practitioners who worked in

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partnership to produce these data, this Volume can be appreciated and used by different categories of readership: scholars, statisticians, third sector organizations and policy makers. Part I opens with the presentation of the ILO Manual approach (Chap. 2 by L. Salamon), the underlying statistical standard at the core of the work presented in the Volume. This is followed by the assessment of the capability of the statistical tool used to capture the varieties of volunteering around the globe (Chap. 3 by R. Guidi, J. Butcher, B. Enjolras, J. M. Mati, J. Wilson and Y. Xu). The following chapter (Chap. 4 by V. Ganta) reviews the statistical sources for measuring volunteering used globally and provides novel information about the latest pilot tests for measuring volunteering done by the ILO. The final chapter of this methodological part (Chap. 5 by T. Cappadozzi, S. Stoppiello, S. Cuicchio and K. Fonović) presents the development of the Italian statistical nonprofit machinery and provides guidance for the implementation of the ILO Manual. Part I is completed by a Statistical Appendix, showing and commenting in detail on the survey questionnaire used in Italy, providing a practical tool for statistical institutes and researchers involved in the design of questionnaires. Part II (Volunteering in Italy: A Test-Bed for the Global Statistical Standards) accounts for the results generated by testing the new global statistical standards in the highly variable Italian context and points to the international value of the national test. The implementation produces a wealth of data and analyses that offer a detailed, nuanced and comprehensive picture of volunteering in Italy. Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 present the Italian mosaic as a research observatory for testing the global standards and describe the results unraveled by this novel methodology, which have so far been inaccessible to non-Italian speaking audiences. Chapter 6 (by R. Guidi) provides the theoretical framework and a methodological grid for analysing the data on volunteering against the varieties of the Italian territorial context. It helps to understand the country and systematizes the complex infrastructure of factors that shape the specific characteristics of volunteering as embedded in a local context. Chapter 7 (by T. Cappadozzi and K. Fonović) presents the zero-order results on the questions provided in the ILO Manual survey instruments in Italy, disclosing the main socio-demographic structural characteristics on both direct (informal, individual) and organization-based (organized, formal) volunteers. This chapter provides the basic reading for practitioners and for researchers in volunteering. Only the occupations of volunteer work are analysed in detail separately, in the following Chap. 8, given the novelty and importance of this possibility offered by the ILO Manual. Chapter 8 (by T. Cappadozzi, L. Cialdea, M. Michelini, M. Musella, G. Ragozini and P. Scalisi) opens the way to interesting new comparative analyses between volunteer work and paid work. It is of particular interest for economists and labour sociologists, for it opens novel research perspectives. Finally, Chap. 9 (by R. Guidi and L.  Maraviglia) focuses on the motivations to volunteer, thus completing the illustration of the results generated with this important aspect. It shows an interesting opportunity for illuminating qualitative aspects of individual action through robust quantitative tools.

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Part III (Boosting the Research on Volunteering Through the Application of the Global Standards) provides multifaceted insights on the opportunities that the adoption of the new global standards opens for developing our knowledge on volunteering. It collects studies of interest for social scientists working on the interactions and causal relationships between complementary and partially overlapping manifestations of individual action that significantly contribute to shape the public sphere. Chapter 10 focuses on the antecedents, and Chaps. 11, 12, and 13 on the impacts of volunteering in Italy, by assessing the outcomes of the ILO Manual implementation against the latest acquisitions of the international literature. These chapters offer analyses that complement the core ILO Manual volunteering data with a wide range of Istat data from the hosting “Aspects of Daily Life” (ADL) social survey and also from other statistical sources. The chapters of this part illustrate issues historically linked to organization-based volunteering only, and for the first time extend the analyses to direct volunteering revealed in the Italian context by the ILO Manual survey instrument. Chapter 10 (by R.  Guidi and L.  Maraviglia) illustrates and puts to test the main theories on the antecedents of volunteering in a complexity-driven perspective. Chap. 11 (by L. Maraviglia, L. Sciolla and J. Wilson) deals with the link between volunteering and trust (general and institutional); Chap. 12 (by R. Biorcio and T. Vitale) deals with the impact of volunteering on political participation; Chap. 13 (by T. Mannarini, A. Rochira, S. Montecolle and E. Meli) analyses the impact of volunteering on subjective well-being. The conclusive Chap. 14 (by the editors R. Guidi, K. Fonović and T. Cappadozzi) offers a summary reading of the methodological lessons learnt and outlines the most interesting substantial discoveries. We recommend it in particular as an initial reading for undergraduate students and policy makers. In short, this Volume offers a valuable one-stop-shop for readers of a variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise seeking an understandable mapping of the crucial concepts related to the accounting of and explanation for the various ways volunteering expresses itself worldwide.

References Agnew, J. (2002). Place and politics in modern Italy. London: University of Chicago Press. Almond, G., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1999). Volunteering in cross-national perspective: Initial comparisons. Law and Contemporary Problems, 62(4), 43–65. Appe, S., et  al. (2017). Global solidarity: Learning from volunteer frameworks in Peru. In J. Butcher & C. Einolf (Eds.), Perspectives on volunteering (Nonprofit and civil society studies). Cham: Springer. Ascoli, U., & Pavolini, E. (2015). The Italian welfare state in a European perspective: A comparative analysis. Bristol: Policy Press. Aymard, M. (1971). In Sicilia: sviluppo demografico e sue differenziazioni geografiche, 1500-1800. Quaderni Storici, 6(17(2)), 417–446.

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Hustinx, L. (2010). Institutionally individualized volunteering: Toward a late modern reconstruction. Journal of Civil Society, 6(2), 165–179. Hustinx, L., Cnaan, R. A., & Handy, F. (2010). Navigating theories of volunteering: A hybrid map for a complex phenomenon. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40(4), 410–434. ILO. (2011). Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Genève: International Labour Office. ILO. (2013). Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization. Genève: International Labour Office. Kousis, M. (2017). Alternative forms of resilience confronting hard economic times. A south European perspective. Partecipazione e Conflitto, 10, 119–135. La Palombara, J. (1964). Interest groups in Italian politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ma, J., & Konrath, S. (2018). A century of nonprofit studies: Scaling the knowledge of the field. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 29(6), 1139–1158. Martinelli, A. (2005). Global modernization: Rethinking the project of modernity. London: Sage. Meijs, L.  C. P.  M., & Brudney, J.  L. (2007). Winning volunteer scenarios: The soul of a new machine. The International Journal of Volunteer Administration, 24(3), 68–79. Meijs, L. C. P. M., & Hoogstad, E. (2001). New ways of managing volunteers: Combining membership management and programme management. Voluntary Action, 3(3), 41–61. Musick, M., & Wilson, J. (2008). Volunteers: A social profile. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Polanyi, K. (1977). The livelihood of man. New York: Academic Press. Polanyi, K. (2001) (or.1944).). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time (2nd ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work. Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press: Princeton. Rokkan, S. (1964). Review of the civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations by Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba. The American Political Science Review, 58(3), 676–679. Salvati, M., & Sciolla, L. (2016). Leggere l’Italia attraverso le diversità regionali. Il Mulino, 3, 433–440. Sazzini, M., et al. (2020). Genomic history of the Italian population recapitulates key evolutionary dynamics of both Continental and Southern Europeans. BMC Biology, 18, 51. https://doi. org/10.1186/s12915-­020-­00778-­4. Sciolla, L. (1997). Italiani: stereotipi di casa nostra. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sciolla, L. (2004). La sfida dei valori. Bologna: Il Mulino. Simsa, R., et al. (2019). Spontaneous volunteering in social crises: Self-organization and coordination. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 48(2_suppl), 103S–122S. Snyder, M., & Omoto, A. (2008). Volunteerism: Social issues, perspectives and social policy implications. Social Issues and Policy Review, 2(1), 1–36. Trigilia, C. (1986). Grandi partiti e piccole imprese. Bologna: Il Mulino. UN General Assembly. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development, 21 October 2015, A/RES/70/1. New York: UN. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division. (2018). Satellite account on nonprofit and related institutions and volunteer work. New York: UN. Villari, P. (1875). Le lettere meridionali ed altri scritti sulla questione sociale in Italia (1st ed.). Loescher: Torino, 1972. Wilson, J. (2000). Volunteering. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 215–240. Wilson, J. (2012). Volunteerism research: A review essay. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(2), 176–212. Wuthnow, R. (1994). Sharing the journey: Support groups and America’s new quest for community. New York: The Free Press.

Part I

Accounting for Volunteering and Its Varieties. A Global Challenge

Chapter 2

The Commonalities of Volunteering: How Consensus Global Definitions Accommodate Regional Variations and Why It Is Important to Use Them Lester M. Salamon

2.1  Introduction In April of 2008, 100 volunteering experts from 24 countries, representing more than 50 local, regional, and national volunteer promotion agencies, United Nations Volunteers, as well as universities, local authorities, and government officials gathered in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to explore the question of whether, and how, to measure the scale and value of volunteering. Early in the discussion opinions split among three camps – those who steadfastly opposed such measurement on grounds that “volunteering is not about money”, that treating volunteering as a form of “work” could encourage politicians to cut funding for paid services, that “monetizing” volunteering could inadvertently undermine the altruistic impulses often motivating it, and that measurement could absorb resources that would be better used elsewhere (European Volunteer Centre, 2008: 7). A second group was generally in favor of such measurement, but only if impacts other than strictly economic ones could still be explored. And a third group felt that the positives of measuring easily outweighed the potential drawbacks, that more consistent and coherent measuring could boost volunteering’s recognition, attract governmental support, improve volunteer management, and encourage others to become involved. Now, more than a decade later, with interest growing in measuring the contribution that volunteering can make, and is making, to the global sustainability goals and other important national objectives and a broad consensus developed around a core definition that has been accepted into key official measurement systems, confusion and disagreements still persist in some quarters over how to define volunteering, whether any agreed definition is possible, and whether measurement of this phenomenon is even desirable. One recent account by a respected anthropologist thus so completely deconstructs the concept of “voluntariness” as to leave it devoid L. M. Salamon () Center for Civil Society Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_2

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of any common meaning and therefore lacking any common basis on which to measure its scale or character. Instead, this analyst suggests leaving it to individual researchers to decide what volunteering is by specifying the projected attributes that attract their interest (Eliasoph, 2020). But this is a sure prescription for tautologies. If I confine my definition of volunteering to activities that produce certain social goods, such as improved health, then I will assuredly be able to show that all volunteering produces those social goods because I have excluded from my definition activities that fail to do so. Other skeptics take a different tack, challenging efforts to measure volunteering or other facets of the broad third or social economy sector on grounds that any such measurement effort is certain to serve chiefly the nefarious and anti-democratic objectives of state actors and therefore cause actual harm to the institutions and individual behaviors involved (Howell & Pearce, 2001; Nickel & Eikenberry, 2016). While such academic quarrels continue to churn, however, an important break-­ through in the conceptualization and measurement of volunteer activity is being deprived of needed support and in danger of being weakened or lost altogether. Against this background, the task to be undertaken in this chapter is therefore to explain how a meaningful conceptualization of volunteering has emerged that can be reconciled with an acknowledgment of volunteering’s diversity, and why a common understanding and measurement of volunteering can at least as likely empower, legitimize, popularize, and validate volunteering as lead to outcomes harmful to it. To do so, this chapter identifies a set of criteria that has been successfully brought to bear to establish a widely accepted consensus conceptualization of volunteering that addresses many of the concerns voiced by volunteer measurement skeptics and shows how these criteria were applied in the development of the conceptualization recently adopted in an important set of official international statistical guidance documents. Underlying the discussion is a conviction that clear and understandable conceptual equipment remains one of the sorest needs in the social sciences, and nowhere more so than in the somewhat embryonic field of third sector studies and volunteering. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, the use of conceptual models or typologies in thinking is not a matter of choice: it is the sine qua non of all understanding (Salamon, 1970: 85). Political scientist Karl Deutsch made this point powerfully in his The Nerves of Government, when he wrote: […] we all use models in our thinking all the time, even though we may not stop to notice it. When we say that we ‘understand’ a situation, political or otherwise, we say, in effect, that we have in our mind an abstract model, vague or specific, that permits us to parallel or predict such changes in that situation of interest to us (Deutsch, 1962: 12).

It is for this reason that Deutsch argues that progress in the effectiveness of symbols and symbol systems is thus basic progress in the technology of thinking and in the development of human powers of insight and action (Deutsch, 1962: 10). At the heart of such progress is the identification of commonalities among physical and social phenomena, a point that seventeenth-century philosopher Rene

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Descartes identified as the prerequisite to rational thinking and that he illustrated in his Discourse on Method through the experiments he described “to discover the essential differences between oils, ardent spirits or alcohols, ordinary water, and acids” (Descartes, 1637).

2.1.1  A Sector Hidden in Plain Sight Anyone who has followed the development of understanding of the third sector and volunteering in all of its manifestations must recognize this need for “basic progress in the technology of thinking” in this field. With the exception of a few industrialized countries, which themselves rely on disparate definitions and approaches,1 most of what limited data exist on the scale or impact of volunteering has come from privately sponsored surveys that use relatively small samples, diverse, often-­ incomparable methodologies, widely differing definitions, and varied numbers of questions. As a consequence, even such basic questions as the share of the population engaged in volunteering in a country has been unknown in most places, or worse, has been reported by various studies to be at wildly different levels in the same country. Residents of the United Kingdom were thus found to be volunteering through organizations at rates that varied from 48% of the population in 1997, down to 2% in 2009, and then part-way back to 29% in 2010. With “informal” volunteering (i.e., volunteering directly for individuals) included, the volunteering rate in the United Kingdom was found to be 74% in 1997, 31% in 2007, 10% in 2009, and 52% in 2010 (Howlett, 2011; Lyons et  al., 1998; Rochester et  al., 2009). While it is possible that British citizens underwent this dizzying array of gyrations in their attachments to volunteering, a more plausible explanation is that the gyrations occurred in the methodologies and definitions applied by different researchers. Indeed, the early estimate resulted from a survey that used 39 different prompts to elicit the extent of “formal” or “informal” volunteering British citizens might have done over an entire year, a sure producer of “social desirability bias”, the tendency of respondents to conclude from the profusion of prompts that interviewers are signaling that the behavior being investigated is one in which the respondent surely should be participating (Abraham et  al., 2008; Fisher, 1993; Hassan, 2005). The other estimates came, respectively, from a time use survey that used only a 1 day “reference period” and a European-wide Quality of Life Survey that mixed “volunteering” with “charitable activities” that could include contributions to the collection plate during church services. Elsewhere the divergence of estimates may 1  Regular surveys of volunteering are currently conducted by the statistical offices of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and the United States. The Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies with support from United Nations Volunteers has been adopted by the International Labour Organization and is available for adoption by countries. A discussion of this Manual is presented in the final section of this chapter.

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have been less pronounced, but only because the available data have been far less extensive. Contributing to this conceptual confusion has been the treatment of volunteering and the broader nonprofit or civil society sector in the basic official international systems for generating statistical data on key facets of national social and economic activity. Two such systems are notable here: first, the System of National Accounts (SNA) overseen by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in cooperation with the major official international statistical agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Eurostat, which guides the assembly of data on country Gross Domestic Product (GDP); and second, the global Labor Force Surveys overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which generates cross-national data on employment. Unfortunately, neither of these two major international statistical systems were doing anything close to an adequate job of bringing the phenomenon of volunteering into meaningful visibility in regular national social and economic statistics. The ILO was particularly derelict here. While quite robust labor force surveys are regularly conducted in virtually all countries, they have historically never asked about volunteer work (Salamon et  al., 2011). As a consequence, a potentially massive activity producing important services and products for millions of citizens is systematically overlooked in the basic global statistical system designed to capture the value of the productive activity of a country’s people. The situation with the System of National Accounts is more complicated but fundamentally ends up in a similar place. While the SNA calls on countries to measure volunteering done through organizations, it values that volunteer work at the actual cost to employers, which, for all practical purposes, is zero, since volunteers, by definition, are not typically paid. In the case of direct volunteering, i.e., volunteering done directly for non-family households, the value of this volunteering is counted only if it produces tangible products, such as housing, that can be valued at the market cost of producing it. But direct volunteering that produces services is treated as “household production for own use” and is consequently considered to be “outside the production boundary of the economy” and therefore not counted (Salamon, 2010). While there can certainly be disputes over the appropriate valuation to place on volunteer work, it seems clear that valuing it at zero, or ignoring it altogether, as had been done before the work outlined here was undertaken, is clearly wrong. While some countries do capture the level of volunteer activity through various social surveys, these typically rely on much more limited pools of respondents and use wildly varying definitions, as the illustration of UK volunteering data demonstrated (Gavelin et  al., 2011). This leaves Time Use Surveys as the only reliable systematic data on volunteer work, but these surveys tend to report their results at such a high aggregation level that volunteering is rarely captured in reported results (Salamon et al., 2011).

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2.1.2  Not Just an Academic Matter This lack of systematic comparative data on volunteering is not simply an academic matter, moreover. It has numerous practical consequences: • It limits the visibility, and therefore the credence, of volunteer work. “Out of sight/out of mind” captures well the neglect that lack of visibility can create for a social phenomenon, and this seems generally to have happened with volunteering. • It makes effective management of volunteer work far more difficult. Management improvement depends critically on measuring the consequences of management change. What can’t be measured therefore cannot be effectively managed. And volunteering has not been effectively measured in most places. • By obscuring the impacts and value of volunteering, it complicates the task of mobilizing support for policies that could bolster volunteer effort. • It denies volunteers a full appreciation of their contributions. • It discourages volunteering by failing to acknowledge its scale and contributions and therefore undervalues its impact.

2.1.3  In Search of Global Volunteering: The Game Plan In the balance of this chapter, we outline the major effort that a sizable international team of scholars, practitioners, and statisticians operating initially under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, and later through the good offices of the United Nations Statistics Division and the Research Department of the ILO, undertook to generate a consensus method for conceptualizing and measuring volunteering and integrate it into the existing official international statistical system. To do so, the discussion unfolds here in five sections: • The first section which follows outlines key elements of the approach we deployed to formulate this consensus conceptualization and measurement method (Sect. 2.2). • The second section identifies the major challenges that the application of this approach surfaced (Sect. 2.3). • The third section identifies the operational steps through which we responded to these challenges (Sect. 2.4). • The fourth section details the consensus conceptualization and measurement strategy that emerged from these operational steps (Sect. 2.5). • A concluding section then lays out a strategy for implementation of this conceptualization and measurement to bring volunteering into meaningful view crossnationally while documenting its variations from place to place and time to time (Sect. 2.6).

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2.2  T  oward a Consensus Conceptualization of Volunteering: The Approach Three key features were central to the approach that was used in developing the consensus approach to conceptualizing and measuring volunteering that ultimately emerged in the 2011 ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO, 2011), and in a broader 2018 United Nations recommended guidance document for a Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UNSD, 2018) outlined here. These included (a) a set of five key criteria that we set for our conceptualization; (b) three key operational features that our research process therefore had to embody; and (c) the set of four steps through which the development of the consensus approach proceeded.

2.2.1  K  ey Criteria for an Acceptable Consensus Conceptualization of Volunteering To guide our search for a valid, cross-national conceptualization of volunteering, we early on identified the following five key criteria that such a conceptualization would ideally meet (Salamon, 2010; Salamon et al., 2011): 1. Sufficient breadth to take account of the great diversity of the volunteering reality evident around the world and accommodate the varied social, legal, and religious traditions of volunteering this has fostered 2. The clarity to differentiate volunteering from other major types of human behavior with which it is sometimes confused, such as leisure activity and household work 3. Comparability, i.e., the capability to generate cross-nationally comparable and reliable results despite the considerable diversity of the underlying realities 4. Operationalizability, the identification of definitional features that could be objectively verified and measured on the ground without requiring subjective interpretations likely to vary from place to place and observer to observer 5. Institutionalizability, the potential ability to integrate the measurement of volunteering into one or another of the official international statistical systems in existence around the world so that reliable and comparable data on volunteering can be regularly produced on a global level to boost its visibility and credibility

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2.2.2  Three Operational Features for Meeting These Criteria 1. The concept of a “common core”. In order to meet the comparability criterion, the project had to settle on a conceptualization that could be applied in the broadest array of countries. To achieve such comparability in the face of the great diversity of concepts and underlying realities, the work outlined here set as its goal not the articulation of an all-encompassing, comprehensive, and confining “standard” of what constitutes volunteering, but rather the identification of the broadest possible “common core” of central attributes. In other words, we sought to build a commodious conceptual house within which the multiple forms of volunteering could find a home. Underlying this concept of a fairly narrow “common core” of attributes is the notion that volunteer activity likely has many attributes outside of the common core that vary considerably across time and space. The central challenge was thus to identify a fairly basic common core of attributes that distinguished volunteering from other human activities without displacing forms of volunteering that met these common-core attributes while displaying significant differences from other “in-scope” forms of volunteering along other dimensions. This notion of a “common-core” conceptualization of a complex phenomenon is widespread in all branches of science. Even all physical phenomena, let alone all social phenomena, have both common elements and varied ones. No definition can reasonably be expected to cover both. The task of definition, rather, is to identify only the most distinguishing common features shared by phenomena that may have many variations along other dimensions. Visitors to the Mammals Room at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., would find a powerful visual demonstration of this characteristic of common-core definitions in the field of biology. There visitors learn that the common-core definition of a mammal formulated by biological taxonomists focuses on only three common features: they have fur, their young are fed with mother’s milk, and they have distinctive ear structures that allow them to sense danger. But, as the mammals exhibition in this museum demonstrates, these three narrow features define an entire menagerie of organisms from wombats to whales and tiny mice to giant moose. These creatures vary massively not only in size but also in natural habitats, in color, in sources of nourishment, and in dozens of other features that their common-core definition never mentions. Such common-core definitions are a critical starting point without which rational inquiry would be impossible. But they are hardly the endpoint of such inquiry. 2. Reliance on a bottom-up research strategy. To identify the attributes of a common core, consensus conceptualization of volunteering broad enough to encompass all relevant types of in-scope volunteer activities, yet operational and clear enough to distinguish volunteering from such out-of-scope activities as personal recreation and household work, we had to discover what the major features of what was considered to be volunteering in different parts of the world looked

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like. We could then put these different pictures figuratively on top of each other to see what the potential, basic common attributes looked like. To do this, we devised an elaborate bottom-up research process engaging a wide assortment of collaborators in countries around the world (Salamon & Anheier, 1997; Salamon et al., 2004. See Table 2.1 below). With the aid of these research collaborators and an agreed-upon research protocol that began with a hypothesized potential set of common elements resulting from an extensive review of available literature, we tested this potential identification of common features against the lived experience of volunteering in what ultimately included over 50 countries embracing every continent but Antarctica and every major religious and cultural tradition. Where significant deviations between local experience and our initial hunches surfaced, we adjusted the initial hunches to accommodate the local experience and thus make sure that our common core would be broad enough to fit the widest possible array of valid volunteering experience. 3 . The use of proxies. Some concepts important to the understanding of volunteering are difficult to identify empirically and are significantly subject to divergent subjective interpretations. One solution to this classic analytical problem is to identify meaningful proxies that are easier to identify and measure but can meaningfully represent the subjective attributes we are trying to identify and measure. In the present case, as noted more fully in the next section, one frequently mentioned common dimension of volunteering is that it is primarily dedicated to activities of “public benefit”. But concepts of what constitutes “public benefit” vary from person to person and country to country. Identifying a central list of manifestations of what constitutes true public benefit against which country experiences would have to be assessed would be a classic over-­reach. Instead, we did this, as will become clear below, by including two criteria in the common-core conceptualization that could serve as proxies for this public benefit concept: namely, the requirement that in-scope volunteering not be paid or be primarily for personal gain, and the stipulation that it not be officially mandated or required. The underlying concept is that if individuals in a particular country engage in activities that are not for personal remuneration or primarily for perTable 2.1  Countries covered by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector and Related UN Handbook Project Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Cameroon Canada Chile Colombia Czech Republic

Denmark Egypt Finland France Germany Hungary India Ireland Israel Italy

Japan Kenya Republic of Korea Kyrgyzstan Mexico Mongolia Morocco Mozambique New Zealand Nigeria

Norway Spain Sweden Switzerland Tanzania Thailand Turkey Uganda United Kingdom United States

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sonal gain and are engaged of free will and not in response to official requirements, the individuals involved must believe that the activities serve a public benefit.

2.3  K  ey Challenges to Devising a Cross-national Comparative Conceptualization and Approach for Measuring Volunteer Work Even a cursory review of available literature made clear that volunteering, not to mention the broader concept of a “third” or “social economy” sector, is one of the most diverse and perplexing concepts in modern political and social discourse, and this was confirmed by the bottom-up research process that we undertook. At the same time, this bottom-up research made clear that there were important elements of commonality in the conceptions of volunteering even though these elements of commonality were not always understood the same way. The search for a common-­ core conceptualization thus took the form of reconciling these elements of commonality with the diverse ways in which these elements manifested themselves or were interpreted. The discussion here spells out some of the challenges this involved.

2.3.1  A Contested Terrain A useful starting point for this discussion is the recognition that the conceptualization of volunteering is thus not simply a diverse terrain, but also a hotly contested one, a battlefield where different and often opposing views vie for ownership of the concept and its ideological, cultural, and political connotations (Chandhoke, 2001; Defourny, 2001; Defourny & Pestoff, 2014). Diverse and often conflicting interest groups, from left-wing social movements to conservative think tanks, claim proprietorship of the volunteering concept because of the emotively desirable connotations it evokes, such as public purpose, freedom of association, altruism, civic initiative, spontaneity, informality, or privatism as an antidote to excessive statism. Regional pride also figures into the definitional tangle. When scholars examining the volunteering phenomenon in the developed North fell into the pattern of focusing only on formal, i.e., organization-based, activity, scholars in the South took issue with this conception and pressed for extensions of this concept to direct or informal helping activities unmediated by formal organizations (Butcher & Einolf, 2017). Voluntarism has thus become the carrier of a diverse set of ideological values an expression of individual freedom, a buffer against state power, a vehicle for citizen promotion of progressive policies, a partner of government in the delivery of needed services, and a convenient excuse for cutting government budgets.

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2.3.2  Significant Elements of Commonality Despite these important philosophical differences in the interpretation of what volunteering represents, considerable consensus nevertheless also surfaced about what it substantively consists of. Fundamentally, virtually everywhere volunteering came through the bottom-up research as a form of behavior that exhibits three fundamental attributes, namely, (a) privatism, i.e., undertaken by individuals in their private capacities; (b) of primarily public benefit; and (c) undertaken of free will, without official compulsion. In other words, volunteering was seen as an activity undertaken by individuals for the benefit of others with a meaningful element of free choice.

2.3.3  D  ivergences in the Understanding of These Common Elements Despite these striking commonalities in the basic understanding of volunteering, important differences surfaced in how these commonalities were understood and interpreted and how they could be “operationalized”, i.e., converted into terms that could be captured in empirical measures and into official, cross-national data systems so that the measurement of volunteering could become more reliable and more regular. Several of these differences were most pronounced. In particular: 1. Terminological differences. Important differences exist even in the words used to depict volunteering  – formal volunteering, informal volunteering, direct volunteering, helping, community development, social mobilization, harambee, civic engagement, citizen participation, on-line volunteering, and many more (Butcher & Einolf, 2017). As a result, it is difficult to determine whether people are referring to the same phenomenon. Further complications arose from the realization that the term “volunteer” or “volunteering” is not widely understood in all parts of the world and has a variety of negative connotations in some societies, where “forced” volunteering was a widespread practice. This meant that the term “volunteer” or “volunteering could not be relied upon to trigger the same understanding in the minds of survey respondents, a serious challenge to framing survey instruments to capture common cross-national empirical measures of the exact extent of the phenomenon. At the same time, adding too-­ numerous “prompts” to survey forms to trigger meaningful common respondent understandings of the activities being asked about creates its own problems of “social-purpose bias”, as respondents feel undue pressure to confirm having taken part in some form of identified social-purpose activity. 2. Motivational expectations. Significant differences also surfaced with regard to the motivational expectations required to qualify an activity as a legitimate example of volunteering. Some observers wanted to restrict volunteering to behaviors motivated by purely religious or altruistic motivations and to exclude behaviors that involve more self-interested behaviors such as gaining valuable

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contacts, skills, or experiences (Habermas, 1989; Heinrich, 2005). But parsing out the purity of participant motivations, while a useful research task, is not a task that is easily, or wisely, inserted into an attempt to measure the scope and extent of volunteering activity. What is more, these motivations are often too fully fused to disentangle with any real precision. Yet pressures for including such criteria persist. 3. Free will. Significant divergences also surfaced in the understanding of the concept of free will or “non-compulsory” activity as a defining feature of volunteering. In some societies, “helping others” or “providing assistance” is an expectation of the culture so that volunteering is not easily identified as a distinct form of activity or really one that is purely “non-compulsory”. Thus, even in contexts where a great deal of volunteering takes place, respondents may not recognize their own acts as something special or distinctive called “volunteer work” as opposed to being simply a normal part of expectations of life in the community. Hence provision had to be made to differentiate formal “official” requirements from ones imposed by informal social expectations. 4 . Without pay. Although most definitions identify volunteering as activity undertaken without pay, our research found that it is not uncommon to have some tangible benefits flowing to the “volunteer” whether in the form of intangible benefits such as contacts or experience or in the form of more tangible compensation such as meals, coverage of modest out-of-pocket transportation costs, or, in some cases, even modest stipends to cover living expenses. This made it necessary to differentiate acceptable and reasonable forms of compensation from ones that violate the expectation that volunteering is an activity typically undertaken without “pay”. 5 . Valid beneficiaries. Most definitions of volunteering specify that it is activity carried out exclusively, or at least primarily, for the benefit of “others” and not for the benefit of the volunteer or that person’s family. But definitions of how broadly the concept of family, or even “direct family”, applies vary widely across cultures, creating potentially enormous divergences in cross-national comparability of the resulting data. Therefore, systems had to be devised to establish international norms for specifying the definition of family while still leaving room to report nationally in accord with national norms.

2.4  Operational Steps for Implementing This Inquiry The task of resolving these issues, forging a consensus conceptualization of volunteering across the widest array of countries and cultures, and working to institutionalize this conceptualization and a process for measuring volunteering into the two major cross-national statistical systems identified earlier required a series of four major steps that unfolded over a 20-year period (Enjolras et  al., 2018; Salamon, 2010; Salamon et al., 2017; UNSD, 2018).

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2.4.1  T  he Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (JHU/CNP) The first step took the form of a major private research project organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies with the initial aim to gauge the scale and impact of the nonprofit sector around the world. During its 25-year life, this project grew from 7 countries to over 40, in each of which local research colleagues were recruited and local review committees assembled to identify local characteristics commonly considered in the respective country to be part of this somewhat amorphous sector, including specifically its volunteer components. This analysis was guided by a common “Field Guide” posing concrete questions to the Local Associates which they were asked to answer on the basis of local understandings and practices. This bottom-up research was carried out in a collaborative and consultative manner allowing the project’s partners to present and discuss their unique regional perspectives and concerns at every stage of the investigation, and then collaboratively searching out how to reconcile these with other perspectives in discussions with core project staff and other Associates. The outcome was the slow evolution not only of key components of a common-core conceptualization of volunteering. Side-by-side with this conceptualization effort work went forward to build an initial base of comparative data on the scope of the global nonprofit sector and of its volunteering component. For this purpose, the project Associates tapped existing data sources on volunteering where they were available but launched our own surveys where they were not, often buying time for insertion of a core survey module on volunteering reflecting our conceptualization work into existing omnibus surveys being carried out in countries. While far from perfect, in the process we amassed a far more reliable cross-national body of data on the scope of volunteering than had ever been assembled.

2.4.2  P  enetrating the System of National Accounts: The UN Nonprofit Handbook Project What this sizable undertaking revealed was that the nonprofit sector so identified was a much more massive presence across the world than previously appreciated and that volunteering as defined through our hypothesized common defining features constituted a massive part of it. Armed with these findings, we were able to make headway on our second major objective  – to go beyond a “one-off” measurement of volunteering and the third sector by institutionalizing the measurement of these increasingly important components of social existence in official governmental data collection systems. This led to the second operational step – an approach to the overseers of the System of National Accounts in the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) to urge them to improve the coverage and reporting on the third sector and volunteering in the System of National Accounts,

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the major international statistical system for reporting on national economies. To their credit, after reviewing our findings and checking them against data already resident in the national statistical offices we had tapped in our research, UNSD officials authorized us to form a Technical Experts Group (TEG) made up of statistical officials and experts on the nonprofit sector and volunteering to produce a manual to guide statistical offices in the production of regular “satellite accounts” to portray the nonprofit sector and volunteering as part of regular national accounts reporting. The inclusion of volunteering in this definitional and measurement process turned out to be one of the most contentious issues, as national accounts statisticians worried that the sudden addition of volunteer effort to measures of the national economy would require major revisions in GDP figures. Doubts were also raised about the wisdom of counting as productive work activity carried out during what economists were accustomed to considering leisure time. Persistent insistence on the part of JHU/CNP principals and other nonprofit experts on the TEC ultimately overcame these objections, at least in part, and it was agreed to recommend inclusion of volunteer work in special nonprofit “satellite accounts”, but not yet in core SNA data. Following extensive reviews by the other multi-national partners in the SNA system as well as leading national statistical agencies, a draft Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts was submitted to the 2003 Annual Meeting of the United Nations Statistical Commission and approved (UNSD, 2003). Volunteering was finally acknowledged to be a meaningful part of national economies creating valuable goods and services deserving of being recognized and counted. And during a 2008 revision of the core SNA system, this decision, previously acknowledged only in a UNSD Handbook, was formally incorporated into the core SNA measurement system.

2.4.3  The ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work While the work with the UNSD established the principle of measuring volunteering in official national statistics, it left open many of the conceptual and operational issues about how exactly to do this. The UN NPI Handbook did not go into detail about how to define volunteering or how to measure it, leaving national statistical offices uncertain about how to carry out this new obligation. To fill this gap, JHU/ CCSS analysts in 2006 approached the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO), which oversees the design of international Labor Force Surveys, the principal source of internationally comparable measures of employment and work. Fortunately, the ILO was in the midst of re-thinking its exclusive focus on “formal work” in a world where informal work in the “black economy” was rampant and saw the focus on volunteer work as consistent with its new-found interest in multiple forms of “decent work” that promote human agency. Accordingly, the ILO Statistics Office promised the JHU team a space to present a manual on the measurement of volunteer work for review by the forthcoming 2008 convening of the every-five-year International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) and

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authorized it to assemble a similar Technical Experts Group comprised of ILO officials and experts on volunteering and labor force statistics from around the world to draft such a manual. Over the next 2 years, this TEG pounded out a core definition of volunteer work and a way to measure and value it that could be implemented through regular labor force surveys on an international scale. The resulting manual was reviewed in several iterations by the entire international labor force statistical community, approved, with a handful of requested clarifications, by the 2008 ICLS, and ultimately finalized and issued as an official ILO guidance document in 2011 (ILO, 2011).

2.4.4  T  he EU Third Sector Project and the UN Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UNSD, 2018) Finally, to solidify the procedure for the measurement of volunteering within the System of National Accounts, the approach adopted in the 2011 ILO Manual was integrated into an expanded United Nations handbook that broadened the coverage of both third sector institutional units and volunteering within the SNA structure. This revision was necessitated by the 2008 revision to the core SNA, experience from the field in implementing the 2003 Handbook, and growing interest in Europe and elsewhere in the concept of “social economy” that extended the coverage of third sector institutions to cooperatives, mutual associations, and social enterprises (Evers & Laville, 2004; General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, 2015). The launch by the EU of a multi-national Third Sector Impact research project provided the vehicle through which to re-examine the 2003 UNSD and 2011 ILO decisions on volunteer work and to devise a way to integrate the various social economy units into a broadened UN third sector handbook (Enjolras et al., 2018). The JHU/CNP team was given the task of devising the conceptualization and method for measuring this expanded third sector phenomenon and undertook a similar bottom-up inquiry tapping input from 12 collaborating institutions (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2018). The concepts and measurement techniques formulated in this follow-up inquiry were similarly ventilated through several practitioner and academic consultations, heavily re-viewed and re-worked by another Technical Experts Group assembled by the UNSD, and thoroughly reviewed by the entire SNA system and by a number of national statistical agencies. Issued in 2018, this Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UNSD, 2018) is available for download at https://bit.ly/TSE-­Handbook. (This handbook is cited hereafter as UN TSE Sector Handbook, where TSE stands for “Third or Social Economy”).

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2.5  Conceptualizing and Measuring Volunteering: From the What and the Why to the How The methods for conceptualizing and measuring volunteering embodied in the UN TSE Sector Handbook thus stand on the base of an elaborate 20-year process of investigation, bottom-up research, and collaboration with national and international statistical agencies, and experts on volunteering and third sector activity in a broad range of countries and regions. In this section, we look more closely at the consensus decisions that have emerged from this elaborate research and collaborative effort. More specifically, we focus here on the three key issues that had to be resolved in the course of these deliberations: first, how to define the central concept of volunteering; second, what features of this central concept to measure; and third, how to design the measurement instrument best equipped to deliver the most valid and reliably comparative cross-national results. Each of these decisions was carefully considered in light of our key criteria and the insights from our bottom-up country- and regional-level research. The following summarizes the issues at stake and the considerations that went into their resolution.

2.5.1  Defining Volunteering Out of the extensive bottom-up research and deliberations with statistics officials and volunteer experts, the following consensus core definition of “persons in volunteer work” was incorporated into the 2018 UN TSE Sector Handbook: Persons in volunteer work are defined as all those of working age who, during a short reference period, performed any unpaid, non-compulsory activity to produce goods or p­ rovide services for others (UNSD, 2018, p.29).

A number of key features of this definition deserve special attention: 1. Use of the term “volunteer”. Although the term “volunteer” appears in the official statistical definition, the participant-facing survey form used to measure volunteer activity does not use this term. Rather, it asks whether the respondent has engaged in any: “unpaid, non-compulsory work; that is, time individuals give without pay to activities performed either through an organization or directly for others outside their own household or related family members”. This reflects the finding from our bottom-up inquiry that the term “volunteering” is not universally understandable and is often viewed in pejorative terms due to “forced volunteering” in various countries. 2. Volunteering as a form of work. This is intended to signal that volunteering is an activity that produces something of value and to persons or entities other than the volunteer him or herself. This clearly differentiates volunteering from leisure activities. A test to determine whether an activity meets this requirement is whether it could potentially be performed by a paid worker instead of the

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volunteer. Thus, playing a musical instrument solely for one’s own enjoyment is not “volunteer work”, but playing a musical instrument (without payment) for residents in a nursing home is work. Volunteer work must extend over at least a short reference period. This is to exclude actions that are incidental to other activities, like helping an elderly person while crossing a street. Volunteer work is unpaid. Volunteer work by definition is work without pay or compensation, in cash or in kind. However, some forms of monetary or in-kind compensation may still be possible without violating this feature of the definition. Thus, volunteer workers may receive some small forms of support or stipends in cash for out-of-pocket expenses to cover living expenses when below one-third of local market wages, and in-kind for meals, transportation costs, and symbolic gifts (UNSD, 2018: 29, ILO Manual, 2011: 14). Corporate volunteering programs in which workers are released from work assignments to volunteer while receiving their regular compensation count as corporate charitable contributions and not volunteering. Volunteer work is non-compulsory. Volunteer activity must involve a significant element of choice. Persons engage in these activities willingly, without being legally obligated or otherwise coerced to do so. Court-mandated unpaid work, work mandated as part of a prison sentence, and alternative service related to a military draft would therefore be excluded, as would unpaid apprenticeships required for entry into a job, and student volunteer work required for graduation or continuation in school. However, peer or parental pressure or expectations of social groups do not make the activity compulsory and therefore do not violate this non-compulsory restriction. Volunteers must be of “working age”. Because young persons do not have the legal capacity to engage or refuse to engage in volunteer work on their own, the adopted consensus conceptualization recommends a minimum age cut-off of 15 years and above for measuring volunteer work. But countries may choose a lower boundary if warranted by local circumstances. Volunteer work embraces both “direct” volunteering, i.e., volunteer activities provided directly to other households, and “organization-based” volunteering, i.e., volunteering done for or through organizations. Organization-based volunteer work can validly take place through multiple types of institutional settings: nonprofit organizations; government institutions; private businesses; self-help, mutual aid, or community-based groups; and “others”. Volunteer work must be done for “others” outside the volunteer’s own family or household. In practice, however, this requirement is difficult to define precisely because of significant cultural differences in interpretations of how far the concept of “family” or even “next of kin” extends. This problem is handled in labor force surveys by establishing the household, which is defined as the persons living together in the same housing unit, as the unit of analysis, and the consensus definition initially embodied this. But significant cultural differences also exist in the range of family members who commonly live under the same roof. The 2013 International Conference of Labor Statistics (ILO, 2013) therefore sought

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to refine this standard by stipulating that unpaid work performed for households of “related family members” should also be excluded, and this standard was included in the UN TSE Sector Handbook (2018: 57). But this concept, too, can vary widely. Countries are therefore urged to specify how these terms are used in their countries to facilitate appropriate assessment of their findings. Other complexities arise in assessing whether to consider foster parenting as volunteer work. The general advice is to include short-term foster parenting as volunteering but longer-term foster parenting as work for household members and therefore excluded from measures of volunteering (ILO, 2011: 16).

2.5.2  What to Measure? The second key question that had to be resolved in the translation of our consensus conceptualization into actual measurement was the question of what aspects of volunteering to measure. Inevitably, trade-offs had to be considered in answering this question. Our strategy of integrating the measurement of volunteer work into existing official data systems in order to guarantee a reliable flow of updated data brought with it certain constraints on the range of specifically volunteer data we could go after and still have success in getting the keepers of these existing data programs willing to incorporate the additional volunteer questions into these surveys. Fortunately, however, as will be detailed more fully below, the embedding of the volunteer questions in existing official data systems brought with it a tremendous amount of demographic data about the volunteers already being captured by these existing surveys. Ultimately, the consensus decision was to focus on five critical dimensions of volunteer work. While adding only five new core variables to those already covered by our recommended survey platform, however, the consensus strategy still captures a wide assortment of details about the demographic composition of the volunteer workforce in each country without having to devote precious survey time to it. What, then, are the five key volunteer variables built into the recommended cross-­ national survey module, and why were they chosen? 1. The number of volunteers. The number of volunteers is needed to compute the volunteer rate, i.e., the percentage of the population that reports engaging in any in-scope volunteer work during the reference period. This number is defined as the total number of respondents who provided at least one “yes” response to questions about whether or not they engaged in the type of activity defined as volunteer work during the reference period. 2. The number of hours volunteered. Since volunteer work is episodic, knowing the number of people who may have volunteered in a particular reference period does not help us understand the amount of volunteer work that has been performed. For this it is necessary to gather information on the number of hours volunteered. This variable also makes it possible to convert the volunteer effort

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into the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) workers2 that the volunteer effort represents, which facilitates the calculation of the total size of the nonprofit or TSE sector workforce, including both paid and FTE volunteer workers. The type of work performed (i.e., the occupation). The third key variable to be collected through the recommended volunteer survey module is the type of work performed by the volunteer. This variable is crucial to be able to assign a monetary value to the volunteer work, which can boost the credibility of volunteer work and demonstrate its contribution to important national goals. To calculate this variable, the recommended approach is to use the “replacement cost”, i.e., the wage that would be paid to a paid worker for the job the volunteer is performing (UNSD, 2018, paras. 4.35–38; ILO, 2011, paras. 5.11–17). Respondents are asked what jobs they performed during their various volunteer assignments in the reference period and how much time they devoted to each. Coders then translate these jobs into occupations using existing occupational classifications, which, in turn, typically record the average wage of the identified job (ILO, 2011: 26–28; UNSD, 2018: 69).3 Aggregated together, this provides a solid estimate of the economic value of the volunteer contribution to a country’s GDP, overall and in particular fields. The institutional setting of the work performed, if any. As noted previously, the definition of volunteer work recommended in the consensus conceptualization includes both direct and organization-based volunteering. For organization-­ based volunteering, information is also gathered on whether the type of organization for or through which the volunteering was performed is a) a nonprofit institution; (b) a for-profit business; (c) a unit or agency of government; or (d) others, including community work. Definitions of each of these types are provided to ensure cross-country consistency (ILO, 2011, paras. 5.20–23) This information can be useful to gauge how volunteering is being managed in different countries. The field (industry) in which the volunteer work is performed. Volunteers tend to concentrate in various fields of activity. The nonprofit share of effective “work” will thus likely vary among fields. Capturing the extent to which volunteers are contributing to the solution of pressing problems in particular fields (e.g., health, education, social services, arts and culture) can thus help identify the contribution volunteering is making to achievement of priority policy goals. The ILO Manual (2011: 33–34) provides information on the existing structures for classifying the fields of both organization-based and direct volunteering. Additional variables available on potentially targeted survey platforms. In addition to the variables specifically to be added to existing survey platforms to capture dimensions of volunteer work, the survey platforms recommended for use in

2  The number of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) volunteer workers is computed by dividing the total number of volunteer hours revealed by the survey by the average hours in a full-time job in the given country. 3  To facilitate this translation, both the ILO Manual (p.  32) and the UN TSE Sector Handbook (p. 70) provide references to the International Standard Classification of Occupations.

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measuring volunteer work automatically capture a wide variety of other demographic variables that can be easily applied to depict the character of volunteers and non-volunteers. Among the variables covered by Labor Force Surveys, our preferred survey platform, are these: • • • • •

Age Sex Employment status (full-time, part-time, unemployed, retired) Non-volunteer occupation Income

2.5.3  Designing the Measurement Instrument A final task in developing a meaningful system for measuring volunteer work was to design a suitable measurement instrument. This involved two key issues as noted below: 1. Selecting an appropriate survey platform. A fundamental decision in the design of any survey is the choice of the survey platform. Because the consensus conceptualization embraces direct and organization-based volunteering, it was necessary to choose a household survey platform rather than an organizational one. Unfortunately, the available data sources with the breadth of coverage and the scope of data items needed to provide a solid, cross-national picture of the scope of volunteering are painfully scarce. • Existing general opinion surveys. A number of general opinion surveys do touch on volunteering, but too often mix it with other forms of charitable behavior, blurring the scope of volunteering. Beyond this, the existing general opinion surveys such as the survey of ten European countries conducted in the 1980s by the UK Volunteer Centre (Smith, 1996: 180–89), the successive waves of the World Values Survey (World Values Survey, 2009), the Gallup Worldview Survey (English, 2011), the European Quality of Life Survey, which covers all 27 EU member states (McCloughan et  al., 2011), and country-specific social surveys tend to use small samples (e.g., 1–2 thousand respondents) and to focus only on organization-based volunteering, fail to provide data on the amount of volunteer time, and are limited geographically (Salamon et al., 2011: 232–3). • Time Use Surveys (TUSs). These surveys collect data on the time people allocate to regular life activities. While they use a rigorous methodology and do cover both direct and organization-based volunteering, the short one-day reference period, which likely misses much volunteering, the limited data collected on volunteering, and the fact that only 26 countries implement the standard TUS protocol limit the utility of this source for measuring global volunteering (Salamon et al., 2011:233–4).

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• Labor force surveys (LFSs). By far the most promising platform for measuring volunteering globally is the labor force surveys overseen by the ILO, carried out by sophisticated national statistical offices, and coordinated through regular International Conferences of Labor Statisticians. Crucial to economic monitoring, such surveys are dependably carried out at least annually, utilize unusually large samples, utilize standard classification systems that can facilitate comparisons between paid and volunteer work, and engage personnel skilled in classifying jobs by occupations thereby permitting easy estimation of the value of volunteer work (ILO, 2011, paras. 24 and 25). The one drawback is that labor force surveys are so crucial to economic policy-making that managers of these surveys are reluctant to add questions that might lengthen response time and limit response rates. • Our proposed strategy. In view of our hope to institutionalize the measurement of volunteering into existing official measurement systems and the strengths and limitations of various available options, we devised a three-part strategy for implementing the measurement of volunteer work. –– Development of a core volunteer measurement survey module. This module, available at https://ccss.jhu.edu/wp-­content/uploads/2020/08/Survey-­ Module_ILO-­Volunteer-­Manual_English.pdf, was designed to be capable of being inserted into a variety of existing survey platforms to provide the basis for generating reliable, cross-country comparative data on volunteer work as defined by our consensus conceptualization. –– Priority focus on encouraging integration of the core survey module into regular Labor Force Surveys (LFSs) in the maximum number of countries. Given the clear superiority of LFSs as the survey platform of choice for measuring volunteer work, our primary recommendation has been to encourage the integration of our core volunteering survey module into LFSs at least every other year in as many countries as possible. –– Fall-back strategy of encouraging countries to integrate the core survey module into periodic national social surveys. While such surveys are far less regular and robust than LFSs, they provide a useful backstop in countries where access to the LFS platform remains blocked. 2. Designing the survey module. Past experience has suggested that the accuracy and reliability of a measure of volunteering depends not only on the conceptualization of volunteering utilized and the choice of survey platform, but also on a number of crucial choices in the design of the survey instruments, in this case our core survey module. Four key issues were especially important in this case: The unit of analysis – the activity focus. Most previous volunteering surveys have treated volunteering as an undifferentiated mass of activity summarized in a single variable, such as the volunteering rate. But volunteering can involve vastly different forms of activity, taking place for different amounts of time, and bringing to bear considerably different skills. To capture such nuances, the pro-

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posed consensus survey treats individual volunteering instances as the unit of analysis. This means that each volunteer encounter during the reference period is treated as a separate, identifiable volunteering “activity” about which a full range of information is assembled. Wording. Given the finding from our bottom-up research that volunteering is not a universally understood or positively viewed term, the recommended survey module eschews use of this term. Instead, respondents are asked about “time given without pay to activities performed either directly or through organizations for others outside one’s own household”. For those who still do not grasp what is being asked about, a carefully designed series of prompts is included to trigger recognition, but countries are free to shape these to national experiences. Prompting. While prompting may be needed to orient respondents to the topic of the volunteer module, research has shown that excessive prompting can seriously distort survey responses, by causing respondents to conclude that the activity being asked about is one they should be doing, producing a phenomenon known as “social desirability bias” (Fisher, 1993). To minimize such bias, the consensus survey strategy adopted in the ILO Manual offers respondents who respond affirmatively to having engaged in any of the activity specified in the core definition the opportunity to identify each of their acknowledged volunteer activities. For respondents who answer “no” to the initial question, the proposed survey makes provision for prompting the respondents with a limited list of 3–4 broad types of possible in-scope activity, which can be tailored to the particular culture of the country in question. Reference period. Most volunteer surveys to date have utilized reference periods covering an entire year, which is taxing to recall for activity as episodic and irregular as volunteering. On the other hand, the reference period normally used for labor force surveys is one week, which is believed to be too short. Accordingly, the survey module recommended in the consensus ILO and UN guidance documents proposes a compromise four-week reference period.

2.6  N  ext Steps: A Promising Foundation for Future Volunteering Research The set of common, core, definitional elements, target data items, and data collection strategies outlined here thus stand on an exhaustive, cross-national, bottom-up information-gathering process that covered every continent, multiple regions within continents, and all the major world religions. In addition, this approach won consensus support from two separate Technical Advisory Groups made up of experts on global volunteering and labor force statistics as well as researchers in a major cross-national EU Research Project engaging close to a dozen major third sector research institutions. This approach has now been adopted in the 2011 ILO Manual

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on the Measurement of Volunteer Work, further refined by the 19th International Conference of Labor Statisticians and the EU’s Third Sector Impact Project, and captured in the newly issued 2018 United Nations Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work. As such, it appears to hold the best hope for generating a regular, coherent, cross-nationally comparable, empirical picture of the scale, composition, demographic profile, and forms of volunteering in countries throughout the world. To say that “the ILO Manual approach” offers the best chance for developing a reliable understanding of the basic contours of volunteering, however, is not to say that further work is not needed. To the contrary, studying volunteering is like building a house, with multiple components supporting and enhancing each other. The data potentially generated by the ILO Manual and its subsequent refinements will provide the foundation for this dwelling, documenting the volume of volunteer activity, the number of people involved, the demographic characteristics of the volunteer army it engages, the distribution of this activity between organization-­ based and direct forms, the fields in which this activity occurs, the actual work volunteers perform, and the variations that exist along all these different dimensions over time and space. But important work still remains to. 1. Promote implementation of the proposed volunteer survey module. Considerable progress has been made in implementing the consensus approach outlined here for generating cross-nationally comparable data on volunteering. However, this progress has been far from adequate. It is therefore imperative that volunteering advocates take the initiative to promote the implementation of the recommended survey module in their respective countries and regions. Statistical agencies are under enormous budgetary pressures and cannot easily pour resources into data systems in which there is little evident external interest. In addition, those charged with implementing these new statistical procedures cannot be expected to be fully informed about this field and can thus use, and will welcome, help from skilled advocates. Volunteer activists and researchers need to put aside many of the misconceptions that surround the recent consensus conceptualization and measurement tools that have been fashioned and rally around these tools as the best hope for rescuing volunteering from the obscurity and lack of visibility to which it has long been subjected. In this as in so much of life, care needs to be taken to avoid allowing the best to become the enemy of the good. Attention here should focus first on encouraging incorporation of the core survey module into periodic Labor Force Surveys. Only where this proves impossible should attention focus on periodic social surveys where these occur. 2. Make needed modifications to the ILO Manual procedures carefully. The ILO Manual and its subsequent refinements acknowledge the possibility that country-­ specific refinements may be needed to accommodate linguistic or other peculiarities particular to various regions. However, great care needs to be taken in making these alterations to avoid rendering the resulting data non-comparable to other locales. Among the relevant cautions are these:

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• Record and save the responses to the original questions if alterations are incorporated. This will make it possible to report results according to the core survey module for cross-national comparative purposes, while making it possible to report results locally according to national sensibilities if these differ significantly. • If new replacement prompts are added, make sure they are clearly in-scope of the defining elements of volunteer work as spelled out in the ILO Manual and its elaborations. • Do not extend the number of prompts beyond a relative handful. Surveys that include more than three or four prompts run the risk of triggering “social desirability biases”, and thereby rendering results suspect and non-comparable with other countries. 3. Initiate additional research to explore facets of volunteering not covered in the ILO survey module. Common definitions, as indicated above, appropriately identify only a limited set of core commonalities of a social phenomenon. They cannot cover all the possible variations. The development of a consensus definition and survey module for integration into existing official data systems does not in any sense close off the need for systematic research on other facets of the volunteering phenomenon. To the contrary, the common-core features can be used to “blow up” the findings of smaller surveys of other facets of volunteering to the entire universe of country volunteers and non-volunteers. In this sense, there is considerable synergy between the data generated on the core variables through the core survey module and the much broader array of variables that independent researchers may choose to investigate. 4. Disseminate the resulting information broadly. Finally, dissemination of the data arising from the activities outlined here will not be automatic. Statistical agencies are notorious for shying away from too much public exposure of their work. Therefore, the task of interpreting and disseminating the resulting data will fall to academics and volunteer promotion bodies. But serious attention will need to be paid to equipping volunteering advocates and support organizations to penetrate and monitor the data assembled by the official statistical agencies and make effective use of it in policy initiatives and managerial improvements. It is well to remember in this context that data do not speak for themselves. They must be accessed, examined, interpreted, and pushed out. And this task will fall to those with the greatest stake in highlighting the activity in question.

2.6.1  Final Thoughts Volunteering is entering a new and exciting phase of recognition as an important renewable resource for social and environmental problem-solving (General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, 2015). Important breakthroughs have been achieved in recognizing volunteering in policy arenas and establishing

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procedures for making it visible in official statistical systems. But the knowledge base on which our current impressions of volunteering rest are still rather feeble and imprecise, making necessary heroic leaps of imputation and intensive manipulation of only partially comparable information. The time has therefore come for volunteering to up its game, to build a more systematic and reliable edifice of knowledge through which to tell its story to the world and to equip advocates and activists to do their jobs better. The statistical equipment that has been needed to advance this cause has now been built and has been integrated into the official global statistical system. What is needed now is for the volunteering community to rally around it, to promote its implementation in the maximum number of countries, to make active and effective use of the information it generates, and to build on this foundation in the years ahead.

References Abraham, K., Helms, S., & Presser, S. (2008). How social processes distort measurement: The impact of survey nonresponse on estimates of volunteer work in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 114(4), 1129–1165. https://doi.org/10.1086/595945. Butcher, J., & Einolf, C. (2017). Volunteering: A complex phenomenon. In J. Butcher & C. Einolf (Eds.), Perspectives on volunteering: Voices from the south (pp. 3–26). New York: Springer. Chandhoke, N. (2001). The ‘civil’ and the ‘political’ in civil society. Democratization, 8(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/714000194. Defourny, J. (2001). From third sector to social enterprise. In C. Borzaga & J. Defourny (Eds.), The emergence of social enterprise (pp. 1–28). London & New York: Routledge. Defourny, J., & Pestoff, V. (2014). Toward a European conceptualization of the third sector. In L. P. Costa & M. Andreaus (Eds.), Accountability and social accounting for social and non-­ profit organizations: Advances in social accounting (Vol. 17, pp. 1–61). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Descartes, R. (1637) [2008].). In I. Maclean (Ed.), A discourse on the method of correctly conducting one’s reason and seeking truth in the sciences. Oxford, UK: Oxford World Classics Edition. Deutsch, K. (1962). The nerves of government: Models of political communication and control. New York: Free Press. Eliasoph, N. (2020). What do volunteers do? In W. W. Powell & P. Bromley (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (3rd ed., Ch. 25). Stanford: Stanford University Press. English, C. (2011, January 18). Civic engagement highest in developed countries. Gallup. https:// gallup.com/poll/145589/Civic-­Engagement-­Highest-­Developed-­Countries.aspx#1 Enjolras, B., Salamon, L.  M., Sivesand, K.  H., & Zimmer, A. (2018). The third sector: A renewable resource for Europe? Concepts, impacts, challenges and opportunities. London: Palgrave Publishers. Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/ pdf/10.1007%2F978-­3-­319-­71473-­8.pdf. European Volunteer Center. (2008). Putting volunteering on the economic map of Europe. In CEV general assembly conference, final report. Brussels: CEV, the European Volunteer Centre. Evers, A., & Laville, J.  L. (Eds.). (2004). The third sector in Europe. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Fisher, R. J. (1993). Social desirability bias and the validity of indirect questioning. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(2), 303–315. https://doi.org/10.1086/209351. Gavelin, K. & Svedberg, L., with Pestoff, V. (2011). Estimating the scope and magnitude of volunteerism worldwide: A review of multinational data on volunteering. In Background paper for the 2011 state of the world’s volunteerism report. (Bonn: United Nations Volunteers

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Programme). Available at: https://www.unv.org/sites/default/files/Background%20paper%20 on%20estimating%20scale%20and%20scope%20of%20volunteering%202011.pdf General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. (2015). The Promotion of the social economy as a key driver of economic and social development in Europe. Paras. 8, 18, and 19. Doc No. 15071/15. (Brussels, December 2015). Available at: https://www.eesc.europa.eu/sites/ default/files/resources/docs/council-­conclusions-­of-­december-­2015.pdf Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hassan, E. (2005). Recall bias can be a threat to retrospective and prospective research designs. Journal of Epidemiology, 3(2), 1–7. Available at: https://print.ispub.com/api/0/ ispub-­article/13060. Heinrich, V.  F. (2005). Studying civil society across the world: Exploring the thorny issues of conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 211–228. https://doi. org/10.1080/17448680500484749. Howell, J., & Pearce, J. (2001). Civil society and development: A critical exploration. Denver: Lynne Rienner. Howlett, S. (2011). Volunteering and society in the 21st century. Paper presented at the 21st IAVE World Volunteer Conference, Singapore, January 24–27. ILO. (2013). Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization. Genève, Switzerland: Available at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-­ dgreports/%2D%2D-­stat/documents/publication/wcms_220535.pdf. International Labor Organization (ILO). (2011). Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Genève, Switzerland: International Labor Organization. Available at: https://ccss.jhu.edu/ publications-­findings?did=136. Lyons, M., Wijkstrom, P., & Clary, G. (1998). Comparative studies of volunteering: what is being studied? Voluntary Action, 1(1), 45–54. McCloughan, P., Batt, W. H., Costine, M., & Scully, D. (2011). Second European quality of life survey on participation in volunteering and unpaid work. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Nickel, P.  M., & Eikenberry, A.  M. (2016). Knowing and governing: The mapping of the nonprofit and voluntary sector as statecraft. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 27, 392–408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-­015-­9552-­8. Rochester, C., Paine, A. E., & Howlett, S. (2009). Volunteering and society in the 21st century. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Salamon, L.  M. (1970). Comparative history and the theory of modernization. World Politics, 23(1), 83–103. https://doi.org/10.2307/2009632. Salamon, L.  M. (2010). Putting civil society on the economic map of the world. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 81(2), 167–210. Available at: https://ccss.jhu.edu/ publications-­findings/?did=320. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. (1997). In search of the non-profit sector: The question of definitions. In L.  M. Salamon & H.  K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the non-profit sector: A cross-­ national analysis (pp. 1–8). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Sokolowski, S. W. (2018). Beyond nonprofits: In search of the third sector. In B.  Enjolras, L.  M. Salamon, K.  H. Sivesand, & A.  Zimmer (Eds.), The third sector: A renewable resource for Europe? Concepts, impacts, challenges and opportunities (pp. 7–48). London: Palgrave Publishers, pp.  78. Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/ pdf/10.1007%2F978-­3-­319-­71473-­8.pdf. Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, W. S., & Associates. (2004). Global civil society: Dimensions of the non-profit sector (Vol. 2). West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S. W., & Haddock, M. A. (2011). Measuring the economic value of volunteer work globally: Concepts, estimates, and a roadmap to the future. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 82(3), 217–252. Available at: https://ccss.jhu.edu/ publications-­findings/?did=321.

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Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S. W., Haddock, M. A., & Associates. (2017). Explaining civil society development: A social origins approach. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, J. (1996). Volunteering in Europe. In C. Pharoah (Ed.), Dimensions of the voluntary sector: How is the voluntary sector changing (pp. 180–189). London: Charities Aid Foundation. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division (UNSD). (2003). Handbook on non-profit institutions in the system of national accounts (Studies in methods, Series F., No. 91). New York: United Nations. Available at: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/SeriesF/SeriesF_91E.pdf. UNSD. (2018). Satellite account on nonprofit and related institutions and volunteer work. New  York: United Nations. Available at: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/docs/ UN_TSE_HB_FNL_web.pdf. United Nations, & Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division. (2018). Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work. New York: UN. World Values Survey. (2009). Documentation of the values surveys. https://www.wvsevsdb.com/ wvs/WVSDocumentation.jsp

Chapter 3

Varieties and Changes of Volunteering: Challenges for an International Standard on Voluntary Action Riccardo Guidi, Jacqueline Butcher, Bernard Enjolras, Jacob Mwathi Mati, John Wilson, and Ying Xu

3.1  Introduction One of the many faces of globalization is the growing relevance of international standards. In a highly interconnected world, guidelines, parameters, frameworks, blueprints, and benchmarks adopted by supra-national agencies help to address global problems (e.g., climate change) whose solution requires some coordination of local practices. Although international standards often are soft governance instruments (Abbott & Snidal, 2001), they are more than a technical question (Mattli & Buthe, 2003). Their design and adoption can generate tensions between “the The chapter is co-authored by Riccardo Guidi (Sects. 3.1, 3.2, and 3.8), John Wilson (Sect. 3.3), Bernard Enjolras (Sect. 3.4), Jacqueline Butcher (Sect. 3.5), Jacob Mwathi Mati (Sect. 3.6), and Ying Xu (Sect. 3.7). R. Guidi () Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] J. Butcher Centro de Investigación y Estudios sobre Sociedad Civil, A.C., Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, Mexico B. Enjolras Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway J. M. Mati Sol Plaatje University, Kimberley, South Africa & Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa J. Wilson Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Y. Xu Department of Sociology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_3

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global” and “the local” and may also reshape the interplay between different local actors. The third sector and volunteering do not appear to be escaping this trend. In the last 20  years international institutions have focused their attention on these phenomena with the intention of adopting new global defining and measurement standards, namely, the UN Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts (UN, 2003 – later reviewed as UN, 2018) and the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO, 2011). As detailed in other parts of this book (see Chap. 5), both are aimed at standardizing the production of local data on nonprofit and volunteering by providing national official agencies with “comprehensive methodological guidance for creating a coherent satellite account on what is called the third or social economy sector” (UN, 2018, p.  1) and “a methodology to guide countries in generating the systematic and comparable data on volunteer work” (ILO, 2011, p. 1). The potential value of these international guidelines seems indisputable. Not only could they boost comparative analysis of third sector and volunteering, they can also help overcome the “methodological nationalism” that contemporary social sciences still largely have (Beck, 2007), enlarge the “informational basis” (Sen, 1992) of international and national institutions, and give nonprofit and volunteering advocates further opportunities to act in the public arena (Bruno et  al., 2014). Nevertheless, the design and the adoption of an international standard on volunteering – as in every other field – is faced with a highly differentiated world. The aim of the chapter is to test the understanding of volunteering of the new international statistical standards, namely, the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO, 2011), against its different manifestations around the world. In the Volume, this test helps meet a crucial challenge: conciliating the strict global statistical standard with the context-dependent varieties, so that global as well as local understanding of volunteering can be further developed. To address this challenge, in the first section we disentangle some problems when defining volunteering as a social institution and illustrate the key aspects of the understanding of volunteering in ILO Manual (ILO, 2011). Then we describe the main characteristics and recent transformations of volunteering in five cultural areas of the world (Anglo-Saxon, Continental Europe, Latin America and Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia). Finally, we discuss the ILO understanding of volunteering in the light of its local characteristics and changes. Our conclusion is that, faced with the many varieties of volunteering across the globe, the new international statistical standards find a good balance between “the local” and “the global”. They thus have the potential to provide research on volunteering with a new “glocal” impetus.

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3.2  I n Search of a Standard Understanding of Volunteering: An Unpacified Field Each global statistical standard on volunteering must adopt a universally valid understanding of its core dimensions. This requirement is faced with obstacles that are difficult to overcome.

3.2.1  A Polyphonic and Multi-level Domain Defining volunteering is neither neutral nor a monologue. Coherently with Weber’s teachings (Weber, 1968) and the more recent proposals on strategic action fields (Fligstein, 2013; Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), we can argue that different agencies operate in the field of volunteering and develop discourses about what volunteering is and what it is not according to their specific and legitimate purposes, beliefs, and experiences. From this perspective, the definition of volunteering loses its seemingly natural or neutral character and becomes polyphonic. For example, the academic community  – comprising many different voices  – has proposed some essential definitions of volunteering as the result of theoretical and empirical analyses (see below, Sect. 3.2.3). Some national governments have adopted their own definitions (e.g., Spanish Law 45/2015; Italian Law D.Lgs. 117/2017) that have not always followed the leads provided by academics and are typically influenced by ideological preferences, political circumstances, and institutional traditions. We could continue with the official statistics agencies (which use  some influential definitions of volunteering for counting the number of volunteers in a country), the definitions coming from the voluntary and nonprofit organizations, and even the general public (Meijs et al., 2003). The patchwork of definitions is even more complicated by the circumstance that, similar to what currently happens in many other fields of action (Brenner, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2004), the scale of this polyphonic domain is at stake. Some “scalar tensions” affect the process through which volunteering is officially defined. Although supra-national agencies  – such as international scientific societies, institutions, statistical  agencies, etc.  – could be considered the most legitimate actors to design a worldwide standard, their actions may clash with national or regional actors protecting a definition that suits their own area. Actors coming from a national or regional mainstream “tradition” of volunteering might be hegemonic, and this could be unsuitable for actors from other regions. This kind of tension could continue even with the use of the standard definition: since international agencies have rarely the power to force national actors to conform (Keohane, 2001; McGrew & Held, 2002), international standards may meet problems in being implemented at the national level without the full agreement of all the actors.

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Recognizing the most relevant “voices” of the definition choir, their in tune and dissonant differences, and conciliating “the global” and “the local” appear to be the first steps in establishing an effective international statistical protocol.

3.2.2  T  he “Embeddedness Question” of Formal Definitions of Volunteering International literature and institutions have pursued a kind of conciliatory strategy by creating formal definitions of volunteering based on (a) what volunteering is not and (b) some essential distinctive characteristics. Volunteering is expected to be: not biologically necessary, not paid labor, not slavery or forced labor, not kinship care, and not spontaneous help (Hustinx et al., 2010, p. 412).

It refers instead to the activities (time, labor, expertise) an individual provides some beneficiaries (single agents or systems, i.e., “causes”) without remuneration, on the basis of free choice usually through nonprofit organizations (Cnaan et al., 1996; Hustinx et al., 2010; Wilson, 2000, 2012; Dekker & Halman, 2003; Musick & Wilson, 2008; Bekkers, 2008). Although labor, free will, gratuitousness, existence of beneficiaries, and organizations are the key elements of a universally valid definition of volunteering, many scholars advice caution in accepting these characteristics as essential. The elements are not always fully present (Cnaan et al., 1996; Hustinx et al., 2010). Identifying an act as volunteering is therefore a matter of degree (Cnaan et al., 1996; Snyder & Omoto, 2008; Wilson, 2012). Volunteering: continues to be a social construct with multiple definitions (...) a matter of public perception. The boundaries between what definitely constitutes volunteering and what does not are permeable. (Hustinx et al., 2010, p. 410)

Especially from a global perspective, these boundaries are heavily dependent on local social contexts. Volunteering cannot be “viewed in isolation from the wider social and cultural context” and it largely depends on “the way the societies are organized, how they allocate social responsibilities” (Anheier & Salamon, 1999, p. 43). Far from being abstract, the attributes of each definition of volunteering are interpretable only by reference to the peculiarities of other spheres of human action. Thus “free will” seems to contrast with the mandatory activities of life; “gratuitousness” is set against the remuneration of work in the market sphere; the orientation to others (individual beneficiaries, communities, society) is opposed to actions driven by particular interests (homo economicus settings, family contexts, etc.); the “organizational attribute” contrasts with other organized ways of providing assistance or advocating a cause (welfare state, electoral system, etc.). This complicates the global validity of all definitions of volunteering in so far as the meaning of each essential element of the definition of volunteering is embedded within social and cultural regional settings and depends on the specific boundaries

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between the different types of human action that exist there.1 The “social embeddedness” (Polanyi, 2001, 1977) of volunteering places limits on the feasibility of an international standard and universally valid definition: although the latter is necessary and possible, it should complement context-dependent meanings, understandings, regulations, and practices of volunteering rather than replace them. This pushes global statistical standards to adopt a “glocal” approach: that is, to conciliate the universal definition of volunteering with its local varieties to encourage both the comparative study of volunteering and the full understanding of its local peculiarities.

3.2.3  Dealing with a Changing Phenomenon Finally, defining the exact contours of volunteering is complicated also because it is a phenomenon on the move. Many studies in the last 20 years show that volunteering in late modern (Western) societies has changed along three dimensions: the “why” (motivations to volunteer), the “how” (forms of volunteering), and the “who” mobilize volunteers (volunteering agencies) (Hustinx, 2010; Hustinx et al., 2010). Volunteering has become more “reflexive” – that is “driven by individual preferences and shaped through occasional involvement in a diversity of settings” (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003, p. 168). The importance of motivations based on the need to explore, entertain, develop, strengthen employability, and answer to an authority request is growing (Beck, 1994; Handy et al., 2010). Consequently, the connection between volunteering and gratuitousness gets complicated. Recent research has also uncovered a plurality of intermediations. The entry of “third parties” (such as corporations, institutions of higher education, and governments) providing “volunteering programs” or requiring volunteer service has reshaped conventional understanding of volunteering by altering the components of “free choice” and “nonremuneration” (Hustinx, 2010; Haski-Leventhal et al., 2010). Moreover, the practice of volunteering is becoming more flexible with the advent of “episodic volunteering”, the action of “individuals who engage in one-time or short-term volunteer opportunities” (Cnaan & Handy, 2005, p. 30), through a weak and limited membership or without any form of organizational commitment, “during special times of the year, or at one-time events, often in the form of self-contained and time-specific projects” (Meijs & Brudney, 2007, p. 69). This form of volunteering

1  For example, helping the members of the same community, beyond the household, may be an option in a highly individualized context and a traditional obligation in another; helping the cousin of a brother-in-law can be nearly compulsory in an area with extended family model and a free act of volunteering in another; helping others informally, with no organizational intermediations, may be considered the only way to volunteer in societies having a low degree of formalization and juridification and considered other than volunteering in a society largely based on formal institutions.

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appears to make sense within a consumerist frame, in contrast to a frame that pictures volunteer work as civic engagement (Eliasoph, 2009).

3.2.4  The Understanding of Volunteering in the ILO Manual The aforementioned elements pose serious challenges to the standard statistical instruments the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) has proposed for the worldwide surveys. The ILO Manual bases the first globally applicable statistical standard on an understanding of “volunteer work” as: Unpaid non-compulsory work; that is, time individuals give without pay to activities performed either through an organization or directly for others outside their own household (ILO, 2011, p. 13) or related family members (ILO, 2013, para. 3.5).

This definition treats volunteering as a form of work – as an individual productive activity, measurable in hours, for the benefit of “others” and causes. It is unpaid, in cash or in kind (although some form of compensation or non-monetary benefits of the volunteer are allowed), and must involve a significant element of personal free choice. The ILO Manual (ILO, 2011, pp. 13–16) excludes from the spectrum of the free choice all the instrumental activities intended to accomplish educational, judicial, military objectives, while it does not consider social obligations strong enough to be compelling. The definition is particularly broad when it comes to the structure of volunteering: it covers both “organization-based” help (through nonprofit organizations as well as other types of institutional settings) and “direct” help (without any organizational intermediation). In the ILO (2011) initial standard, direct volunteering was included as long as it was not for the benefit of members of the volunteer’s own household (i.e., living in the same housing unit), but the ILO (2013) later excluded all informal help to related family members from the definition of volunteering. This development is clear in the UN handbook Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UN, 2018) which considers “related family members”, as: “immediate family” or “next of kin”, which can be taken to mean parents, grandparents, siblings, children and grandchildren of household members (UN, 2018, p. 57).

Does this universal definition match the regional varieties of volunteering in the world? Are there any controversial discrepancies between the global standard understanding and the local realities? And is it possible to resolve them? Exploring

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“traditions” of volunteering in different macro-regions of the world can help to answer these questions.2 In what follows we describe conventional understanding of volunteering in a number of regions, the key players in those regions, how volunteering is embedded within societies, what significant changes have occurred in recent decades, and, finally, how the understanding of volunteering adopted by ILO fits into the region.

3.3  Volunteering in Anglo-Saxon Countries Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) share broadly similar political structures, legal systems, and civic cultures in addition to being predominantly English-speaking. It is not surprising that they are similar in the role volunteering plays in their social life. Regional understanding of volunteering  In Anglo-Saxon countries volunteer work means unpaid, non-obligatory labor donated to individuals or a cause, through or on behalf of an organization. “Unpaid” does not prohibit compensation for expenses entailed in volunteering, such as travel costs. “Non-obligatory” does not rule out volunteering for an organization in response to social pressure from other members or with the encouragement of one’s employer. Volunteer work is a bureaucratized form of help, complete with job descriptions, schedules, screening of new recruits, training, and professional supervision. This sets it apart from more informal, casual, and often spontaneous helping. Key players  Governments try to promote volunteering in all Anglo-Saxon countries. Right-wing regimes use volunteer labor to reduce state expenditures and lower taxes. Left-wing parties have historically regarded volunteer work with suspicion, as a way for governments to shirk their responsibility to provide a safety net for the poor, but lately they have used volunteer work to improve the delivery of social services, make it easier for people to find jobs, and involve more people in the civic life of their communities, especially members of minority groups and youth (Lindsey et al., 2018). In recent years, each of the Anglo-Saxon countries has established nonprofit “peak organizations” to organize and mobilize volunteer work, often in conjunction with a state agency. These organizations help shape policy concerning volunteer work and operate as advocates for the third sector in the competition for government

 Regions are considered here as supra-national areas united by crucial cultural, economic, and institutional characteristics. By “volunteering tradition” it is meant a coherent, multi-layered, and dynamic combination of cognitive components, formal regulations, legitimized actors, and reiterated practices of volunteering which has been consolidated (institutionalized) in a context in a medium–long-term period (Guidi, 2021). 2

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funding. They also encourage gathering data on volunteers, typically by social surveys administered by state agencies. In the United States, the Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency established in 1993 to mobilize volunteer labor, primarily through its core programs of Senior Corps and AmeriCorps. In conjunction with the US Department of Labor, it gathers data annually on volunteer activities in the United States. In these surveys volunteers are defined as individuals who perform unpaid volunteer activities through or for an organization. In the United Kingdom, the National Council for Voluntary Organizations (NCVO) is an umbrella organization for charities, which functions as the main advocate for volunteer work in the country. In conjunction with the UK Office of National Statistics data on volunteering are gathered on a regular basis. Due, in part, to NCVO advocacy, volunteering is now included by the British government in the list of indicators of National Well-Being in the United Kingdom. But for this purpose the definition of volunteering has been modified. It is based on the European Quality of Life Survey question: “How often do you do unpaid voluntary work for community and social services (e.g. organizations helping the elderly, young people, disabled or other people in need) in the last 12 months”, but only those who volunteer “at least once a month” are included in the well-being indicator for purposes of comparison with other European countries. In Canada, the federal government partners with Volunteer Canada to increase the number, quality, and diversity of volunteer experiences in the country. A volunteer is defined as “any person who gives freely of their [sic] time, energy, and skills for public benefit without monetary compensation”. Recently, the organization has promoted a broader definition of volunteering to include “supporting a cause”. By means of the Canadian Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, administered every 5 years, the organization supervises the collection of data on volunteering in Canada. Volunteering Australia was founded in 1998 as the peak body for volunteering in Australia and now receives partial funding from the federal government. The purpose of the organization is to inform and improve best-practice volunteer involvement. In 2015, Volunteer Australia announced a new definition of volunteering: “Volunteering is time willingly given for the common good without financial gain”. The purpose of this change was to include informal volunteering that takes place outside the context of a formal organization. Notwithstanding this new definition, disputes as to the true nature of volunteering continue especially where funding is concerned. Volunteer New Zealand works in collaboration with the New Zealand government to promote volunteerism and guide government policy. It defines volunteering broadly as “work done of one’s own free will, unpaid for the common good”. In national social surveys, volunteering is defined as “unpaid work for or through an organization or group”. Social embeddedness  Volunteer rates in Anglo-Saxon countries are higher than in other parts of the world with the exception of Nordic countries (Gil-Lacruz & Marcuello, 2013). This is due to a number of factors (Baer et  al., 2016). Anglo-­ Saxon countries are richer, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, and rates of volunteering are higher in more affluent populations. They are more democratic,

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and volunteering flourishes where freedoms to vote, express opinions, and associate are protected. People in Anglo-Saxon countries also tend to be more trusting of strangers, which has an important influence on volunteering (Dekker & van den Broek, 1998; Glanville et  al., 2016). Anglo-Saxon countries have comparatively strong welfare states, and welfare states encourage volunteering by harnessing the nonprofit sector to execute welfare programs (Henriksen et al., 2019). Finally, there are more volunteers in Anglo-Saxon countries because their religious population is mainly Protestant (Prouteau & Sardinha, 2011). While the Anglo-Saxon countries exhibit broadly similar patterns of volunteering, there are some differences. In particular, volunteering seems to be more deeply embedded in the culture of the United States where a much stronger ideology of personal responsibility and self-reliance fostered by a frontier economy, the absence of a landed gentry, and a weak and ethnically fragmented working class has resulted in more limited state involvement in social services and heavier reliance on private philanthropy. The United States has a strong tradition of “associationalism” (a disposition to “get organized” to tackle social problems). The United States is also distinctive in being more religious than other Anglo-Saxon countries, and much of the volunteer work performed in the United States is religious in nature (Tang, 2016, p. 55). The more secular Anglo-Saxon countries favor volunteer work in the areas of social services and sports and recreation. In all Anglo-Saxon countries volunteer work is performed mostly by members of the middle class. Members of the working class and racial and ethnic minorities help each other informally through interpersonal relationships. Gender also makes a difference to volunteering but whereas in the United States women are more likely to volunteer than men, chiefly because of the popularity of religious volunteering, the reverse is true in the other Anglo-Saxon countries where men are slightly more likely to volunteer than women, due to the popularity of sports and recreation volunteering (Paxton et al., 2014). Changes in volunteering  As far as recent trends are concerned, the rate of volunteering has not changed much in the past two or three decades in any of the AngloSaxon countries. This is despite partnerships between the state and peak organizations to recruit more volunteers, probably because their goals are ill-defined and they are inadequately funded (Rochester, 2018, p. 1). Thus, despite policies designed to promote social inclusion, there is little evidence from Anglo-Saxon countries of any change in the class bias of volunteering or in the exclusion of racial and ethnic minority groups from volunteer opportunities. A significant trend common to but not exclusively in Anglo-Saxon countries is the advent of episodic volunteering, consisting of short-term and one-off assignments (Hustinx, 2010). People in modern economies are less willing or able to make long-term and regularly scheduled commitments to formal volunteer work and more inclined to contribute on an occasional basis. The regional variety of volunteering and the ILO understanding  The understanding of what volunteering means and how it is to be measured promoted by the peak

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organizations in the Anglo-Saxon countries is largely consistent with the ILO definition. The one exception is that they do not all include a reference to its subjective aspects. Some of the national surveys include a reference to “free will” or time “willingly given”, while others omit this criterion. ILO’s definition, which requires the activity to be “non-compulsory”, alludes to this characteristic, but volunteer activities inevitably vary in the extent to which the individual feels he or she “has no choice” but to meet an obligation. Two other issues are pertinent to the ILO definition of volunteer work, at least as understood in Anglo-Saxon countries. First, it is conventional in Anglo-Saxon countries to draw a distinction between volunteering and activism or “advocacy”, and in some cases academic researchers have followed this practice. While there are undoubtedly some differences between these activities, it would be false to treat them as entirely different forms of behavior: definitions of volunteer work must allow room for behaviors intended, for example, to promote a cause. Thus a distinction can be drawn between feeding a hungry person and fighting hunger, but both activities are a form of volunteering. Second, research shows that people are more likely to see work as volunteering if it is properly motivated (Musick & Wilson, 2008, p. 17). Purity of motivation is the template against which individual acts are judged (Handy et al., 2000). Volunteer is defined by what it means. This raises the question whether, for example, unpaid voluntary work performed entirely to promote one’s career but for a “good cause” should be counted as volunteering at all.

3.4  Volunteering in Continental Europe The history and contextual background of volunteering varies greatly between European countries. Traditions of altruism and charity in Europe are rooted in medieval institutions and practices, especially religious ones (such as the Catholic Church). In most European countries, the modern conception of the voluntary sector emerged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of political transformations, including the rise of democratic institutions and popular movements. Each European country has followed its own historical path on the route toward modernity and democracy, leading to cultural and institutional variations affecting the shape of national voluntary sectors, in spite of a common cultural origin. Regional understanding of volunteering  A variety of definitions of volunteering has traditionally been in use in Europe emphasizing different aspects of the phenomenon. At the core of the definition of volunteering in Europe are the notions of free choice and absence of remuneration; however, national definitions have tended to delimit the phenomenon in different ways. In the majority of EU Member States, there is no legal definition and no specific law regulating volunteering, although there are, in most countries, policies or established practices that support its devel-

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opment (GHK, 2010). Country-specific laws and policies generally define volunteering as activities performed by individuals, based on their free will, for the benefit of another and without compensation. In some countries (Bosioc et al., 2012), definitions of volunteering combine voluntary and charitable activities, blurring the distinction between donations of time and donations of money. Others restrict volunteering to formal volunteering (organization-based), whereas some include both formal and informal volunteering. Volunteering might also, in some countries, be defined in relation to its motivation (public good, solidarity). Some definitions exclude any form of financial benefit from qualifying as volunteering, whereas others accept some amount of financial compensation. Finally, in most cases, volunteering is an activity taking place outside the family. However, definitions of what is considered to be within the family boundaries vary across countries. In short, definitions of volunteering in Europe differ in how they draw the line between formal and informal activities, between paid and unpaid activities, and between what is considered to be within the limits of the family and what is outside the family. In the recent years, efforts have been made, under the sponsorship of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the European Union (EU), toward a common standardized definition of volunteering across Europe. On a more general level, as pointed by Lyons et al. (1998), the civil society paradigm of volunteering – emphasizing political participation and social capital, and organizations that are the product of people’s ability to work together to meet shared needs, address common problems, and serve their members – has traditionally been dominant in Europe. This “European paradigm” may be contrasted to the nonprofit sector paradigm, predominant in the United States, which puts the emphasis on philanthropic activities and sees volunteering as an act of altruism, a gift of time rather than money. Key players  In all European countries there is at least one  – and in many cases several – national umbrella voluntary organizations whose mission is to promote and support volunteering (see CEV  – European Volunteer Center (2012) for an overview of the main national organizations). However, at the European level, the European Volunteer Center, the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, and SPES – Associazione Promozione e Solidarietà have been particularly instrumental – through the European Volunteer Measurement Project3 – in disseminating the ILO Manual and promoting its implementation across Europe. This project secured the support of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliamentary Volunteering Interest Group, and the European Economic and Social Committee. Social embeddedness  Europe is a heterogeneous and diversified area when it comes to volunteering, with Nordic countries having the highest volunteer rates (48–32%), followed very close by people living in Continental and Anglo-Saxon  See more at https://ccss.jhu.edu/research-projects/vmp/evmp/.

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countries (30–20%), Northern post-Communist countries (16–12%), Mediterranean countries (10–8%), and Southern post-Communist countries (8–3%). Different “welfare regimes” appear to be associated with different levels and types of formal volunteering (Gil-Lacruz & Marcuello, 2013; Salamon et al., 2017). The Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries are characterized by high levels of social welfare spending and high levels of formal volunteering. Continental countries combine higher levels of social welfare spending with medium levels of volunteering, whereas Mediterranean countries display lower levels of social welfare spending with lower levels of volunteering than the Continental countries. Finally, post-Communist countries appear to be characterized by low levels of social welfare spending and low levels of volunteering. In addition to differences in welfare state regimes across Europe, there is evidence (Curtis et al., 2001; Salamon et al., 2017) that economic, religious, and political factors – such as levels of economic development, religious traditions (Protestant or mixed Christian societies display higher levels of volunteering), and number of years of continuous democracy – explain variations in levels of volunteering. In short, different levels and forms of volunteering in Europe reflect different historical institutional paths (Salamon & Anheier, 1998; Salamon et al., 2017). It is likely that contextual factors, such as a country’s cultural and historical background or institutions, largely determine levels of volunteering. Religious traditions (Protestantism vs. Catholicism), socio-political institutions (welfare-state regimes), as well as differences in the importance of values (individualism vs. communalism), combined with different historical trajectories (such as the rise and decline of Communism in Eastern Europe), are associated with different levels of volunteering across Europe. Cultural variations, for example, in Mediterranean Europe, where the traditional obligation of helping family members outside the household, persisting as a result of a residual welfare system and the influence of Catholic family values, explain the importance of informal forms of volunteering. In Northern Europe, higher levels of individualism enabled by a universal welfare state and a long history of self-organizing might explain high levels of formal volunteering. Changes in volunteering  Changes in volunteering in Europe are driven by cultural and technological transformations. Changes in the motivational structure of volunteering, the course and intensity of commitment, the organizational environment, and the fields of activity favored by volunteers have been documented in several European countries (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003; Rochester et al., 2010; Henriksen et al., 2019). More precisely, these changes would include an increased importance of individual-directed motives for volunteering, a multiplication of the organizational settings where volunteering takes place, the emergence of new, more informal ways of organizing local engagement, a turn toward new, identity-based organizations, and the rise of “episodic volunteering”. From such a viewpoint, volunteering seems to become more “reflexive” – inasmuch a new form of reflexive volunteering can be identified (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003)  – and more individualistically motivated, but in the form of altruistic individualism rather than ego-centric individualism (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003). In addition to this set of

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cultural changes and influences, technological changes  – digitalization of communication – influence the ways individual volunteers are mobilized, interact with each other, and participate in organizations. On the one hand, digital media might constitute a tool for mobilizing new groups to volunteering activities. On the other hand, some have claimed that this development will weaken the traditional model of voluntary organizations (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). There are few empirical studies of the effect of digital media on volunteering, and the results of the effects of digital media on civic engagement are overall inconclusive (Enjolras & Eimhjellen, 2018). The regional variety of volunteering and ILO standard  In spite of national structural and cultural variations, there is, across Europe, a tendency toward institutional isomorphism concerning the definition and measurement of volunteering. Processes of standardization in public policies as well as statistical measurement needs tend to unify the conception of what is volunteering and subsume cultural differences. The ILO (2011) Manual has been recognized by the European Union on several occasions (European Commission Communication, 2011; European Economic and Social Committee, 2012; European Parliament, 2012). Most recent surveys of volunteering implemented by researchers or national statistical agencies across Europe have adopted the ILO (2011) Manual’s definition of volunteering as being unpaid, non-compulsory, and outside the household and family, or a definition close to the ILO one. Consequently, data sources allowing mapping volunteering across Europe are better suited for making comparisons. These measurement practices are also part of the ongoing process of homogenization and standardization of the concept of volunteering in Europe. Differences in conceptions of volunteering tend to disappear when comparisons are made because of the need to adopt common measurement standards (such as the ILO definition) and of the development of common discourses and policies at the European level. The ILO Manual allows for some national contextualization of the wording of the questions about volunteering but assumes the use of a common definition of the activities that are either in or out of the scope of the concept of volunteering. And yet national statisticians are free to add additional instruments to measure activities that fit their national conceptions of volunteering.

3.5  Volunteering in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Beyond common historical and linguistic features, changes and continuities in political and socioeconomic domains characterize LAC countries in the last 20 years. The trend toward democratization has been especially noticeable although this transition has not always been smooth and public accountability remains weak. The proportion of the population living in extreme poverty has significantly diminished (CEPAL, 2011), but socioeconomic inequality (Gasparini & Cruces,

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2013) and violence (Kessler, 2015) continue to scar the region. In addition, sizeable differences by country in several areas remain (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 20). Regional understanding of volunteering  In the LAC region the idea of volunteering has special connotations. When the word “volunteer” is used, it is often confined to organized and purely altruistic practices only and does not always match the comprehensive UNV (1999; UNV-IS, 2001) definition of voluntary action (no remuneration, free will, for the benefit of others or the general interest – outside of family – within either formal or informal settings). Although formal volunteering clearly exists in this region (21.4% of people volunteered in formal organizations in the last month in LAC countries, according to the Gallup World Giving Index 2010), fully understanding voluntary action in this area of the world entails going beyond conventional notions of formalization. As Roitter (2017, pp. 176–177) wrote: in Latin America, the universe of civil society organizations is usually built up with very different levels of formalization (...) there are cultural factors that are deeply rooted practices in the region which are not necessarily regarded as voluntary actions. Such is the case of reciprocity, good neighbor practices or helping others informally (...) people would not link such actions with the word “volunteer” (Roitter, 2017, pp. 176–177).

It is worth noting that the Latin American average for participation in civil society organizations (as either a member or volunteer) is higher than the world average (Cao et al., 2011, pp. 59–65). This kind of civil society participation is defined as the process of individuals becoming involved in decision making as well as taking responsibility for leading toward a common objective (Chávez, 2003). Citizens acting in this manner are at the heart of the democratization process which presents opportunities to work for positive social change and more equality in the region. Volunteering, mostly understood as solidarity, has been one of the expressions of these different kinds of civic participation (Butcher, 2010). Crucial players  The Catholic Church is the major force in volunteering, philanthropy, and assisted charity (asistencialismo) in the LAC region. Secular philanthropy has become important in the last two decades, mainly through new non-profit foundations, community foundations, and corporate philanthropy (Sanborn & Portocarrero, 2005, p. 10). In Mexico, ENSAV (National Survey on Solidarity and Volunteer Action) revealed that as far as volunteering and solidarity were concerned, in 2005, most of the volunteer time was given to the Church, schools, and community, in that order. This trend changed in 2012 when volunteering in schools became more prevalent followed by time given to Churches in second place and to the community in third (Butcher García-Colín, 2013). As far as formal volunteering is concerned, INEGI (2019) found that 72.5% of laborers in civil society organizations are volunteers. In Brazil, volunteers in the nonprofit workforce account for 0.7% of the total workforce of the country (Salamon et al., 2017). The nature of the relationship between private and public sectors has become especially important in recent years due to the inability of both civil society and governments to mitigate or eradicate social problems in the region. There is “a

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growing recognition that the increasing complexity of social and economic problems transcends the capacity of any single sector” (Austin et al., 2004, p. 7). This is not the same in every country since there are also political issues in some places in the region where the voice of civil society has been quieted and banned from government recognition. Social embeddedness  Self-help and mutual aid have a special significance in the LAC countries. The region’s welfare systems are weak, and people rely more heavily on informal volunteering to provide basic care. Here informal volunteering falls within a collective and cultural frame, as opposed to the more individualistic frame common in much of the Global North (Butcher & Einolf, 2017, pp. 10–11). In selfhelp and mutual aid work people with shared needs, problems, or interests join forces and unite to address them (e.g., self-led youth groups, farmers’ cooperatives, communal activities, organization of religious events, and town festivities). Also, families and communities share close bonds, and collective forms of participation are valued over individual and market-driven forms. Some ways through which social research has tackled this contextual peculiarity help to further understand the social embeddedness of LAC volunteering and to better tackle the challenge of measurement. Researchers of Mexican ENSAV – a household survey that measures solidarity and volunteer activities performed in 2005, 2012, and 2016 (Butcher, 2010, 2013; Butcher & Verduzco, 2016) – had to deal with cultural understanding of the word “volunteer” or “volunteer activity”. For the survey, people were asked whether they contributed by giving examples of different volunteer activities instead of being asked directly if they were volunteers. If they answered positively, then they were questioned on frequency and duration. Verduzco (2017, p. 196) commented on these choices by writing that “in Mexico and in other countries in Latin America, these actions take place in a variety of environments spanning formal and informal organizations, a variety of groups and communities, as well as individually... it was crucial to capture this”. This confirms what Landim and Thompson (1997) stated almost 20 years ago: in LAC the “nonprofit sector” goes beyond the NGO phenomenon and embraces a vast universe of associations and organizations, with varying degrees of informality and with multiple, and not always clear, functions. Another example comes from the consideration of ayni, a word for “Andean reciprocity” (Sanborn et  al., 1999) in Quechua, the Peruvian indigenous language (Appe et  al., 2017). Ayni is about repaying in order to “tip the balance in one’s favor” (Allen, 2002, p. 72) where community is not only what humans have created, and nature is not separate, it is about the “interconnectedness” of life (Villalba, 2013, p.  1430). The comparison between different forms of “solidarity” in this context makes plain that reciprocity and mutuality operate in many ways. Changes in volunteering  Corporate volunteering has evolved in Latin America more than in other regions of the world (Allen et al., 2011; Allen, 2012). The 2015 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report (SWVR) identifies volunteering, citizen participation, and social activism as the channels for reaching development in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (UNV, 2015, p. 10). In the LAC

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region concerns are now shifting toward a governance agenda where citizens are asking for more seats at the table, since spaces for civic action have been closing and “citizens voices are calling for more involvement for setting agendas” (UNV, 2015, p. 10). The 2018 SWVR uses original research in this area of the world to demonstrate the importance of volunteering and its distinctive contribution to community resilience (UNV, 2018). The regional variety of volunteering and ILO understanding  After long discussions and theoretical considerations, ILO and UNV have provided ample definitions of volunteering. It is the culture and custom of each region that imbeds personality into volunteer activities and actions. However: problems with the definition of volunteering create problems with measurement as well... nonresponse and social desirability may cause social surveys to overestimate volunteer participation, while failure to recall volunteering may cause surveys to underestimate volunteering. This failure to recall may be stronger in the Global South, where volunteering is a less familiar concept (Butcher & Einolf, 2017, p. 267).

A major challenge is quantifying volunteering and citizen participation in LAC in its entirety to obtain a full picture beyond formal volunteering numbers, since informal participation has not been recognized sufficiently in processes of peace and development. ILO and UNV guidelines can be used to correct this deficit in the data. More information of volunteering and participation will be available once countries in this region apply this method.

3.6  Volunteering in Sub-Saharan Africa In Africa, volunteering is shaped by a socioeconomic and political condition historically characterized by widespread precarity resulting from colonial and postcolonial exploitation, high unemployment rates, epidemics, and low state capacity in delivering welfare services and public goods. These conditions have shaped both spontaneous and institutionalized volunteerism which is inherently self-help and mutual aid oriented (Mati, 2016). The regional understanding of volunteering  While the scholarship of volunteering is gaining ground in Africa, existing conceptions are influenced by definitions in the Northern academy and international development. There is, nonetheless, an attempt at understanding pro-social practices that fall under volunteerism in Africa. These are as diverse as are societies in sub-Saharan Africa. However, currently this phenomenon is generally understood as a human behavior geared toward helping each other and that it involves an act of free will in providing help or a service that benefits an individual, society, or the community without an expectation of a financial or material reward (Akintola, 2011). It is worth noting the complexity inherent in the nested interweaving of what is considered formal or informal volunteering. Specifically, because African volunteerism is practiced as part of a

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“networks and sites of social heritage whose rules and sanctions are ‘formal’ for those belonging to them, while remaining ‘informal’ in the sense of not seeking public recognition or registration” (Fowler & Mati, 2019, p.  4), separating the formal from the informal into neat categories is not always easy. As such, formal and informal volunteerism are best understood as conception within the academy and policy cycles. Like elsewhere in the world, African volunteering is Janus-faced; it involves free will and an element of symbolic coercion and is directed toward the benefit of others, while at the same time, there are individual and collective benefits. Ontologically, African volunteering is dominated by mutual aid type of activities reflecting not just altruism toward other members of society but also self-benefit element on the part of volunteers. In many languages these existing mutual aid and horizontal self-help schemes are not translated directly as volunteering. They are, instead, seen as helping each other, out of people’s own free will. Nonetheless, these activities are seen as part of volunteerism in both academic and policy cycles. Contemporary African volunteering also features practices prevalent in international development where volunteers “freely” give their time, knowledge, and skills through a formal organization. This is in the context of the emergence of donorfunded development projects, which has gone hand in hand with the increasing recognition of volunteer agency as an important factor in delivering development, partly as local community contributions to their own development. Additionally this could also be intended as a desire to have a “slice of donor funds” due to increasing precarity (Wilson, 2006; Moleni & Gallagher, 2006; Kaseke & Dhemba, 2006) and because poverty and disease leaves little choice for the poor (Jimu, 2008). Some African “volunteers”, therefore, may be motivated by considerations for stipends as a source of livelihood. The question here is whether we need to be referring to these as volunteers, or poorly paid workers. Social embeddedness  Contemporary African pro-social behaviors are deeply embedded in a triple heritage of cultures that include Christian, Islam, and African traditions whose values decree that all those in need have a right to succor from other members of society (Fowler & Mati, 2019) and that helping, serving, or giving to other human beings is a cardinal tenet of faith (Maharaj et  al., 2008). In this regard, both religious faith and African moral codes and philosophical worldviews can be said to be part of the symbolic coercive apparatus driving African volunteerism. This is because religion plays a prominent role in informing everyday life, actions, and interactions of most Africans, including informing motivations for helping each other in all situations (Mbiti, 1969; Gumo et al., 2012). The result of such faith inspired helping is the widespread direct volunteering or citizens helping other individuals. Additionally, African volunteering is a product of politics, economy, and ideological orientations on the question of who bears the responsibility for welfare and how the same is to be delivered (Prince & Brown, 2016; Wilson, 2006). Volunteerism in Africa, among other prosocial behaviors, is part of the ubiquitous informal networks of “economy of affection” (Hyden, 1983) that help Africans get by (Prince &

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Brown, 2016; Bruun, 2016; Wig, 2016). Based upon a moral code of social solidarity, African volunteerism binds citizens together as well as shapes how citizens make demands on one another on the basis of their (real or imagined) ethnic and place/space affinity. Volunteerism is also invoked even in formal development efforts on the continent. For example, it has been vital in supporting national and global efforts that have turned the tide against pandemics like HIV/AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa and, more recently, Ebola in West Africa (Mottiar & Lodge, 2018; IFRC, 2015). As is elsewhere in the world, there is a class dimension on motivations to volunteer in Africa exhibited in the notion of noblesse oblige for wealthier citizens (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011). This suggests that class is a determinant for the type of sensibilities that determine the type of volunteering in Africa and that incentives to volunteer may differ for the rich and the poor. In this regard, horizontal volunteering oriented toward collectivist solidarity and survivalist mutual aid, where people help each other directly, has come to have particular social and emotional significance in sub-Saharan Africa especially among poorer populations (Mati, 2017). Most volunteering occurs informally, i.e., outside of organizational contexts (CIVICUS, 2011), while formal volunteering is highest in religious organizations (Habib et al., 2008). Therefore, both moral and structural compulsions are part of the contemporary forces shaping volunteering in Africa. Key players  Given the foregoing, besides individual Africans, the other key players in the volunteering sphere in Africa are religious institutions, government and inter-­ governmental agencies such as the Africa Union, UNV, and ILO, and development NGOs  – both local and international. In this regard, a number of governments, working in close collaboration with NGOs and religious institutions, have established national volunteer infrastructures aimed at channelling volunteer agency toward development. Another development related to the establishment of national volunteer infrastructures has consisted in providing formal definitions of a volunteer in national contexts. Changes in volunteering  In recent decades a number of countries (e.g., Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Nigeria) has established volunteer infrastructures, especially manifesting as youth service volunteer schemes. The “voluntariness” of these schemes differ across the different nations. Moreover, at the Pan-African level, the African Union initiated the Youth Volunteers Corps in 2010. Civil society organizations on the continent and in partnership with Northern NGOs have not been left behind in the establishment of such volunteer youth service schemes (e.g., Southern African Trust’s SayXchange). Marketed with narratives of citizenship formation, these schemes are seen as part of solutions to the problem of youth unemployment as well as a strategy for getting young people involved in finding solutions to national and continental development challenges and therefore promoting the public good (Muehlebach, 2012). Here, volunteering is seen as part of a repertoire of positive citizenship values, while for young people, these volunteer schemes also serve as means of gaining work experience and skills that can be

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advantageous in the job market (Mati, 2017). This has been more accentuated in contemporary neoliberal era following state’s withdrawal from promises of social redistribution and care, which has exacerbated the African precarity (Muehlebach, 2012; Mati, 2014). Another recent development on the continent regards private companies that have started to use/deploy volunteers as part of their “corporate social responsibility” (Muthuri et  al., 2009), a phenomenon Ananya Roy (2012) terms “neoliberal ­benevolence”. These emergent contexts force us to reflect on whether, when the motive to volunteer is geared selfish gains such as acquiring a skill by unemployed persons for the purposes of being competitive in the job market; or when corporations use staff to volunteer in community services for the purpose of good corporate citizenship, is it still volunteering, even though such acts deliver a greater good? Regional variety of volunteering and ILO understanding  The ILO (2011, p. 13) understanding of volunteering is challenged by the complexities of Africa. What constitutes a household is fluid, and the concept of “family” is much ampler than “next of kin” in this continent. Given its ambiguities, some governments in Africa have made adaptations though remaining heavily influenced by the ILO orientation toward measurement (e.g., StatSA, 2014). Other initiatives not keen on the comparative and measurement approach have developed their own conceptions (e.g., ROK, 2015 for Kenya). Moreover, the very nature of African volunteering exhibits both altruism and self-interest. In this regard, a challenge for ILO Manual is to capture the many contradictory facets of volunteerism, which is invoked in discourses and projects for active citizenship, as self-help and mutual aid, for gaining skills necessary for job market, as a stepping stone for essential contacts for a job.

3.7  Volunteering in East Asia Area4 The East Asian countries (e.g., China, South Korea, and Japan) have long been affected by the Confucian culture, which admires authorities and collective values. Meanwhile, the Confucian notion of “ethical living” allows people to speak out against injustice and to help the needy people (Hsu, 1975). This cultural heritage significantly affects volunteering in the region. The regional understanding of volunteering  There are two major categories of volunteer participation in East Asia area: “compulsory” and spontaneous. “Compulsory” participation is a top-down volunteering approach supported by the government or organized by the government-organized non-governmental 4  This section was partially funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China, entitled “Public Trust on Fundraising of the E-Philanthropy in a New Era” (Project Number: 18BSH109).

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organizations (e.g., the Communist Youth League of China). Spontaneous participation is a bottom-up volunteering approach often initiated by grassroots voluntary service organizations (VSOs). In situations of spontaneous participation, people volunteer for various personal reasons such as filling idle time, helping others, and trying something different. For example, in 2001, Volunteer Service Act was passed in Chinese Taiwan, which defines voluntary service as “a type of work, including various back-up or ancillary services, not due to personal obligations or liability, spontaneously and voluntarily done by the public, to serve the society with their knowledge, physical ability, labor, experience, skill and time free of charge, so as to further promote the efficiency of public affairs and enhance social welfare”. Nowadays, though many people agree that volunteering should be based on free will and it is not for remuneration (Xu & Ngai, 2011), people also may volunteer in response to the government’s mobilization in both western and eastern countries. For example, the US government leads the Peace Corps, which aims to encourage college students to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries (Gerdes, 2011). Nevertheless, people in East Asia area, who are living in collectivist cultures, are more likely to volunteer under pressure than the citizens in western countries. Key players  In the context of East Asia, the governments often play a significant role in promoting volunteer services. For instance, in China, top-down volunteer participation is very common (Shen, 1999; Xu, 2013, 2014a), and the government has mobilized millions of people to conduct various voluntary works since 1949 (Xu, 2018). Similarly, both the South Korea government and Japanese government have taken various measures to promote youth voluntary services. For example, youth voluntary services are rated in credits as an important part in school admission tests in the South Korea; Japan also revised syllabus in 1989 in primary, middle, and high schools to add a new provision indicating schools to provide voluntary services education. More than 100 Japanese universities, at the same time, introduced voluntary services into their formal curriculum (Cui & Jin, 2002). According to a survey, about 57% of university students had the experience of participating in voluntary services in Japan (Wang & Hu, 2012). However, uniquely, in the case of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, the civil society surprisingly outperforms the government’s influence in voluntary work. The earliest charity organizations in Hong Kong can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, soon after the territory was ceded to Britain in 1842. Some indigenous charity organizations such as Tung Wah Hospital (founded in 1851) and Po Leung Luk (established in 1880) actually have a longer history than some well-known international charity organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, established in 1863, or World Vision, set up in 1950 (Lee, 2005). In Chinese Taiwan, the earliest volunteer organization dates back to 1963, when local Taiwanese spontaneously formed a “Volunteer Fire Fighters”, with the

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encouragement and help of the police, to relieve the understaffing situation in firefighting at that time. In 1982, the administration government in Taiwan officially launched a set of innovative schemes to advocate, support, design, and promote social welfare voluntary services in all areas. And a wide range of volunteer organizations were set up. In 1995, the government launched a program named “Volunteers Needed to Promote Social Welfare Services” to encourage, invest, and support voluntary services (Huang & Shi, 2012). Social embeddedness  With little doubt, the above East Asian countries are more or less under the influence of traditional Confucian and/or Collectivist Cultures. Many participants join the volunteer activities because of the group pressure, which attaches great importance to collectivism. Besides, Taiwan is rather religious, with roughly one third of its population Buddhists. Buddhism in Taiwan has adapted itself to a living philosophy and played an active role in social affairs. Tzu Chi Foundation, the largest Buddhism organization, for example, preaches the idea that “doing good deeds is the best way to practice Buddhism”. An increasing number of Buddhists believing in the teaching of “being compassionate and showing mercy for others” decide to devote themselves to social voluntary work (Lv & Zheng, 2005). Last but not least, as elsewhere, socio-demographic characteristics (such as age, gender, education, income, etc.) are important predictors of volunteerism. According to a survey in Hong Kong, people who participate in formal volunteering are more likely to be older, well-educated, and from higher socioeconomic groups (AVS, 2009). Changes in volunteering  Importantly, the latest media revolution has led to the new separation between the state and the society. The ICT-related media revolution is the most important innovation trend affecting South-East Asia’s traditional volunteering. Nowadays, people can easily connect to the Internet via electronic devices such as computers, mobile phones, and tablets (Xu, 2014b). On the one hand, no need the authorities’ support, people can easily set up grassroots BBS, WeChat, and QQ groups that focused on discussing public issues related to the voluntary works. On the other hand, while mass media themselves have become autonomous, they attempt to obtain the agreement of a mediatized public, and the consumption of culture also enters the service of economic and political propaganda (Habermas, 1989). In other words, the media revolution is generating new voluntary activities, new VSOs, and new relations between volunteers and associations. The positive point is that ICT-related revolution may strengthen grassroots initiatives more than government ones. However, at the same time, it is worthy of our close attention that while the traditional governments such as China see a positive role and applies the principle of “no contact, no recognition, and no ban” to the grassroots voluntary organizations, it frequently happens that marketing campaigns are presented under the guise of e-philanthropy; the potential of e-volunteering is doubtful. It is worth

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studying further through interdisciplinary approach to better understand the media revolution’s impacts on volunteering (Xu, 2019). The regional variety of volunteering and ILO standard  ILO defines “volunteer work” as “Unpaid non-compulsory work” (see above). However, it is a bit difficult to define the term “non-compulsory” in the South-East Asia areas, since there is a culture that lays emphasis on cohesiveness among individuals and prioritization of the group over self. In other words, though the bottom-up volunteering is ever-­ growing, it is no doubt that not a few people in South-East Asia join the voluntary work because of a feeling of social obligation, such as peer pressure, parental pressure, or the expectations of social groups (Xu, 2014a). As so often happens in Asia, students are required to perform some community service by education authorities, and employees are asked to conduct some “voluntary services” by their employers. With little doubt, while such a feeling of social obligation makes the activity actually compulsory, it appears an unresolved question and should be examined by solid empirical research.

3.8  Discussion and Conclusions According to the analyses presented here (see Table 3.1 for a synthesis), volunteering has a universal value as well as a local connotation. There is space assigned to unpaid action for others’ benefit outside the household in all the societies, but significant differences about its understanding and practice exist between macro-­ regions of the world, and within them. Many of the basic characteristics of this kind of action depend on the particular socio-institutional local patterns. This variety confirms the context-dependent nature of volunteering (Anheier & Salamon, 1999) and constitutes one of the most serious challenges to comparative analysis of and international policy on volunteering, as well as to the measurement instruments needed. This variety, however, does not appear radical and irreducible. Macro-regional analyses reveal two major issues emerging from a context-­ dependent understanding of volunteering: the “free” connotation and the organizational intermediations. On the one hand, cases in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and to certain extent in Mediterranean Europe illustrate that unpaid action for others’ benefit outside the household often develops within contexts where self-­interest and altruism are structurally combined and respond to socio-cultural obligations toward extended family, the local community, religion, or the State. On the other hand, what has been so far generally considered the mainstream organizational intermediation of voluntary action in Anglo-Saxon area and Continental Europe (nonprofit organizations as contexts of membership and volunteering) appears globally challenged both “from the bottom”, by informal (or direct) volunteering within proximity circles (e.g., cases in Africa

Social embeddedness

Key aspects of volunteering Common understanding of volunteering

Continental Europe Generally including free activities performed by individuals for the benefit of others and without compensation. Country-level differentiations about the boundaries between formal and informal, paid and unpaid, within/outside the family

Higher rates of formal volunteering in countries having social-­democratic and liberal welfare regimes, high levels of economic development, Protestant or mixed Christian religions, many years of continuous democracy. Informal volunteering associated to the extended family model

Anglo-Saxon Conventionally intended as unpaid, nonobligatory labor donated to individuals or a cause through an organization. Recently, informal practices (i.e., outside organizations) sometimes included (e.g., Australia)

Organized volunteering performed mostly by middle class; informal volunteering preferred by working class and minorities. Religion generates favorable environments for volunteering (e.g., USA)

Region of the world

Table 3.1  Key aspects of volunteering in five macro-regions of the world

Formal volunteering practiced in/for church, schools, and community. Due to the weak welfare system, informal volunteering provides basic care and falls within a collective and cultural frame

Latin America and Caribbean Commonly understood as organized and purely altruistic practice. Spread solidarity informal practices generally not considered as voluntary action by population Sub-Saharan Africa Free will activity provided to the benefit of individuals, community, or society without a material reward. Nested interweaving between formal or informal practices. Spread mutual aid activities reflecting both altruism and self-­ orientation generally not considered as voluntary action by population Formal volunteering associated to high incomes and practiced mainly in religious organizations and development NGOs. Informal pro-social behaviors embedded in religious traditions and in the “economy of affection” networks. Volunteerism also invoked in and embedded within development programs

Confucian culture significantly affects volunteering in the region

East Asia A top-down and “compulsory” approach to volunteer participation coexists with a bottom-up and spontaneous one

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Changes in volunteering

Episodic volunteering

Region of the world Key aspects of volunteering Anglo-Saxon Crucial players Governments, nonprofit “peak organizations”

Table 3.1 (continued)

Driven by cultural and technological transformations: individualization of volunteering, multiplication of the organizational settings, emergence of more informal ways, turn toward new, identitybased organizations, rise of episodic volunteering

Continental Europe Policy-­makers, umbrella voluntary organizations at country and European level

Sub-Saharan Africa Besides individual Africans, religious institutions, government and inter-­governmental agencies. NGOs, national volunteer infrastructures Driven by neoliberalism: Growing corporate volunteering, increasing 1. Youth service volunteer schemes to limitation to civic tackle youth participation in unemployment and for governance processes, getting young people renewed contribution of involved in finding volunteering to UN Sustainable Development solutions to development challenges Goals 2. Corporate volunteering

Latin America and Caribbean Catholic Church and, more recently, foundations and corporations

Driven by the media revolution: new organizations, voluntary activities, and relations between volunteers and associations

East Asia Governments and grassroots organizations

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and Latin America), and “from the top”, by State “compulsory” volunteering (e.g., China). Cases from the Global South are the most problematic for international standards because the most sedimented, widespread, and relevant solidarity practices only partly adhere to the current defining conventions of volunteering. Macro-regional reports however show that this shift is not limited to Global South countries. The different ways of understanding volunteer work could be indeed indicative of a worldwide social divide: while formal volunteering through nonprofit organizations appears commonly associated with helping activities provided on the basis of membership, free will, and with no personal interest by individuals belonging to middle classes, informal (or direct) volunteering seems instead connected to helping activities provided with no monetary remuneration by popular, working, and underprivileged classes as a way to satisfy socio-cultural obligations and material needs (Hustinx et al., 2010, pp. 414–427; Butcher & Einolf, 2017). As Table 3.1 summarizes, volunteering across the globe seems to be changing under the pressure of recurrent trends, such as its growing episodic nature, the increased role of corporations and government agencies, the pluralization of settings, and the expanding role of ICT.  Some of these changes create further problems in defining volunteering. The increased popularity of corporate volunteering in Africa and Latin America as well as the instrumental use of volunteering for the career purposes observed in Anglo-Saxon and African countries may adulterate the altruistic nature of volunteering in so far as they have been observed to “manipulate the components of free choice and non-remuneration” (Hustinx, 2010). The trends toward episodic volunteering noted in Anglo-Saxon and Continental Europe appear to challenge its civic value (Eliasoph, 2009). State-led programs within the frame of neoliberal and “workfare” ideologies risk making volunteering another form of un(der)paid work (Shachar & Hustinx, 2019a, b; De Waele & Hustinx, 2019; Overgaard, 2019). The understanding of volunteering and the measurement instruments proposed by the new global statistical standards – in particular the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) – seem on the whole well designed to develop cross-national comparisons without trivializing local varieties and current changes of volunteering. ILO (2011) conciliates global standard and local heterogeneity through an inclusive approach toward the definition problems and a modular strategy to grasp different kinds of volunteering. On the one hand, ILO (2011) draws the basic boundaries of volunteering by adopting a “hard” notion of compulsory action which excludes informal help to related family members (ILO, 2013, para. 3.5) and the activities provided for legal or organizational obligations (e.g., student volunteer work required for graduation) from the spectrum of voluntary action. The activities due to social obligations (e.g., expectations of the social group) are instead defined as free (ILO, 2011, pp. 14–15), i.e., potentially considered as volunteer work. These choices help to clearly distinguish what is free and what is compulsory in a survey. On the other hand, a modular strategy is followed to tackle the implications of “soft” obligations. In some countries of the world the binding power and reach of

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social obligations could result in a misalignment between the ILO definition and public attitudes toward what counts as volunteering as well as an overestimation of how widespread volunteering is. As Latin American and sub-Saharan cases show, the difficulties generated by “soft” obligations largely correspond to the difficulties of statistical instruments to deal with voluntary action having low degrees of formalization. ILO (2011) makes it possible to tackle the issue by separating data on formal and informal (or direct) volunteering – to eventually unpack the analyses – and, where necessary, by adding some questions to the “core” module in order to scrutinize peculiar facets of informal volunteering (e.g., kinds of recipients, subjective meanings of the action, etc.). The ILO standard moreover covers four clusters of “institutional settings”: (1) charity/nonprofit organization/NGO/union/religious organization; (2) business; (3) government; (4) others, including community (ILO, 2011, p. 22). Although the last of these is somewhat vague, ILO standard seems to go beyond the Global North mainstream and include the variety of intermediations of volunteering found across the globe. On the whole, ILO (2011) appears equipped well enough to deal with the changes in volunteering too. Although the limited reference period (activities in the last 4 weeks) does not measure the amount of episodic volunteering, the detection of hours volunteered and organizational settings (articulated as mentioned in nonprofit, for-profit, public) for each volunteer provides an opportunity to grasp emerging trends. While ILO (2011) does not include the subjective meanings (motivations, self-reported benefits, etc.) of volunteering within the “core module”, it considers them among the additional data to collect potentially. This permits the global standard to be used to situate voluntary action within personal biographies and to report the weight and change in the meanings of volunteering across time and space. Tested against the local varieties and current changes of volunteering, ILO (2011) standard seems ultimately to allow an unprecedented development of cross-­ national comparisons, a deepened understanding of voluntary action at local level, and an advancement in knowledge of its major trends. Although it has been so far mainly conceived as a global research and governance instrument, ILO (2011) is well suited to examining the heterogeneities of volunteering in the different regions of the world. It thus seems to represent an opportunity for a new “glocal” agenda on volunteering.

References Abbott, K.  W., & Snidal, D. (2001). International ‘standards’ and international governance. Journal of European Public Policy, 8(3), 345–370. Akintola, O. (2011). What motivates people to volunteer? The case of volunteer AIDS caregivers in faith-based organizations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Health Policy and Planning, 26(1), 53–62.

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Chapter 4

Different Contexts, Different Data: A Review of Statistical Sources on Volunteering and Some Steps Beyond Vladimir Ganta

4.1  Introduction Volunteering is widely recognized as an altruistic activity that positively impacts on the wellbeing of all people involved, whether receiving or offering help. Stories about great people, from different places on the Earth, contributing to their own communities, helping needy human beings or even acting upon environmental topics can be found on the Internet, seen on TV and heard on the street. These stories put a spotlight on the best qualities of human nature, inspire and show the way to a better future. Acknowledging this great human potential, societies all over the world are developing solutions to integrate volunteering into strategies to build resilience and promote development. In this regard some societies are more successful than others, and availability of solid evidence to decision makers is one of the key factors that influences the efficiency of such efforts. No doubt, volunteering can play an important role within efforts to achieve progress towards sustainable development. However, in order to better understand this role, the potential of volunteering and most importantly how to manage it efficiently, great stories are not enough: reliable and accurate statistics are needed. National Statistical Offices (NSO) and research organizations develop measurement approaches and relevant tools to estimate the scale of volunteering at national and regional level. These approaches differ in definitions applied, questionnaire design and data collection tools used. Countries’ capacities to measure volunteer This chapter is based on the ongoing research work led by the author. Some preliminary results (Table 4.1 and Fig. 4.1) were previously published in a conference report (ILO, 2018). V. Ganta () ILO, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_4

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work in all its aspects and consistently over time are influenced by these differences. Trying to address these measurement issues, the International Labour Organization (ILO) published the Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO Manual) in 2011. Then, the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (19th ICLS) organized by the ILO in 2013 established the international definition of volunteer work, integrating it into the new international standards on statistics of work and recommending it to countries facing measurement processes. Countries’ attempts to apply the international standards revealed some conceptual and practical issues that need clarifications. This chapter presents the ILO Statistics Department’s research work in identifying the main issues and best practices related to the measurement of volunteer work by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and in developing and testing new measurement tools.

4.2  I LO Research Activities Related to the Measurement of Volunteer Work This research started in 2017, when a partnership between the ILO and the UN Volunteers programme (UNV) was established with the aim to increase the availability and the quality of national data on volunteer work. The first activity within the ILO-UNV partnership was to conduct a review of national practices in measuring volunteer work, in preparation for the 20th ICLS (ILO, 2018). It had to shed some light on the progress of the application of new international standards on statistics of work, set by the 19th ICLS, five years earlier (ILO, 2013). Review’s main objectives were to identify: • Evolution of national measurements of volunteer work between 2007 and 2017. • Main measurement approaches applied. • Good practices and issues in relation to the application of international standards. From November 2017 to April 2018, three data sources were used to collect relevant information on measurements of volunteer work made by NSOs. Table 4.1

Table 4.1  Number of countries and data sources identified, by sources of information Source of information Websites review ILO survey of national practices

Countries identified 74 59

Data sources 120 89

UNSD data on TUSs

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52

Source: ILO (2018)

Characteristics of data sources Country, name, type, year Country, name, type, year and other characteristics (see the questionnaire in the annex) Country, name, type, year

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45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Dedicated module

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

TUS

Fig. 4.1  Number of data sources used to measure volunteer work, by type, 2007–2017. (Source: ILO (2018))

summarizes the type of information collected and the number of countries for which information was identified. Data from the three mentioned sources were processed, and the final data set was obtained. It contains details on 169 sources, which collected official data on volunteer work in 103 countries, covering 80% of the land and 62% of the global population. These numbers however are likely to underestimate the scale of the measurement efforts, as there is evidence that some countries did not publish information about measuring volunteer work on the websites of statistical authorities and did not provide this information to the ILO. The second research activity was to develop and test alternative survey modules that could offer solutions to the existing measurement issues. Results of the review were used to design two experimental survey modules. The first one combines the ‘activity approach’ recommended by the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) and the practice of countries with volunteer measurement experience. The second one was designed by combining the ‘beneficiary approach’1 and the best practices identified by the review. Specific questions were designed to test different approaches to: • • • • • • •

Capture participation in volunteer work. Identify the specific tasks performed through volunteering. Measure time dedicated to volunteer work. Establish the type of volunteer work (organization-based or direct). Test whether engagement in unpaid work was truly voluntary. Check the boundary between volunteer work and other forms of work. Define seasonal patterns of participation in volunteer work over 12 months.

1  It consists in asking respondents about unpaid volunteer work done for different types of beneficiaries (e.g. organizations, persons), rather than about engagement in different types of unpaid activities.

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• Evaluate volunteer work done in relation to non-financial donations (gifts in kind). A two-stage process was designed to test the above approaches through qualitative and quantitative methods. In the first stage, cognitive testing in partnership with NSOs was conducted in Ukraine (January 2019) and Senegal (June 2019), in order to assess whether the developed survey questions are understood as intended by respondents and can be used to accurately identify people doing volunteer work according to the ILO definition. At the second stage, a field test was conducted in Ukraine (October 2019), in eight administrative regions of the country, on a random, representative sample of 4600 households. Next sections of this chapter will offer details on the findings of the ILO review, complementing them with the findings of the tests. The main issues related to the quality and the comparability of the estimates produced by countries will be discussed. As expected, there are some differences in concepts and definitions applied across data sources. Although these differences may be conceptually significant, their possible impact on estimates is considered limited. Differences in the design and in the practical implementation of surveys are considered to have a more important impact on estimates. Actually, within the current practice, surveys applying the same definition, on the same population and relatively close in time, can result in significantly different estimates.

4.3  Findings of the ILO Research 4.3.1  Data Sources Used to Measure Volunteer Work According to the data review, most of the measurements were made by observing households, in either surveys or censuses. Only seven administrative sources or establishment surveys used to measure volunteer work could be identified. This preference for household data has a positive impact on the capacity to measure direct volunteering that is performed outside institutional settings and which becomes part of the daily life of many people. According to the latest UNV estimates, published in the “2018 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report”, on average 70% of volunteer work done at the global level is direct volunteer work (UNV, 2018). As shown in the report, in 190 out of the 208 countries for which estimations were made, this share is 50% or more. In 14 countries it is above 90%, reaching 99% in Mozambique and Egypt. Thus, by observing only organization-based volunteer work, it would be impossible to obtain a complete and reliable picture of the phenomenon. This is one of the reasons why international standards on statistical measurement of volunteer work recommend collecting data in household surveys.

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More precisely, the ILO Manual recommends attaching specially designed questions (modules) to large-sample household surveys (ILO, 2011). Preference is given to Labour Force Surveys (LFS), due to their wide adoption, large samples and regularity of data collection, although any other survey sharing the same characteristics can be used too. Among countries which are members of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, the share of countries which measured volunteer work in household surveys is the highest: 46 out of 56. Almost 93% of the region’s population was surveyed by official statistics. The region covered by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean is the next one with most measurements. Although only half of the countries measured volunteer work, almost 90% of the population was surveyed. In other regions, the coverage is significantly lower: 54% of population surveyed among members of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, 24% among those of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and 9% in the region covered by the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Countries which are members of the UN Economic Commission for Europe are also those that worked more on developing different data sources to measure volunteer work: about two thirds of them used at least two different household surveys to produce estimates. In other regions, most countries used only one data source. At the global level, between 2007 and 2014, Time Use Surveys (TUSs) were the main data sources on volunteer work, representing on average 75% of the total number of data collection tools applied. Starting with 2015, the number of measurements made by attaching modules to other surveys increased significantly and the share of TUSs fell to 13%. This important shift in measurement approach happened after the adoption in 2013 by the 19th ICLS of the international statistical definition of volunteer work (ILO, 2013), with the corresponding recommendations to measure it regularly, using the tools offered by the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011). The first important increase in national measurements made using the modular approach occurred in 2015, when two questions, one on participation in organization-­ based and one on participation in direct volunteering, were attached to the EU-SILC, conducted in all EU countries (Eurostat, 2017). A similar effort was made earlier (2011), in the Eurobarometer Survey, commissioned by the European Parliament and conducted by TNS opinion, a company specialized in coordinating multinational opinion surveys. The Eurobarometer used only one question to measure participation in volunteer work (European Parliament, 2011). After 2015, the number of measurements made worldwide using the modular approach decreased; however it stayed above the pre-2015 level, LFSs becoming the main data sources of national statistics on volunteer work, followed by General Social Surveys (GSS) (Fig. 4.1). The geographical distribution of countries by types of surveys used to collect data on volunteer work helps to understand how the recommendation on the use of the modular approach was applied in different regions. Most of the 36 countries that used both TUSs and modular approach are concentrated in the Northern

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hemisphere. The 34 countries that used only the modular approach are spread across the Globe. Finally, the 33 countries that used only TUSs for measurement are concentrated in the Southern hemisphere. These data show that, in all regions, countries are interested in measuring volunteer work by using the modular approach, that NSOs are investing in developing survey tools and that a significant progress in applying the international recommendations was reached. It also shows that with all the progress made, a large number of countries from South America, Africa and Asia rely on estimates produced by only one type of survey, the TUS, which is considered less efficient in applying the international standards, due to the use of very short reference periods for measurement (e.g. 24 hours). In the next several sections of this chapter, more details on this topic will be offered.

4.3.2  D  ifferences in Definitions of Volunteer Work Applied in Statistical Surveys According to the ILO review (ILO, 2018), in general, countries tend to use the same three criteria to identify an activity as volunteer work: voluntary engagement in unpaid activity for the benefit of others. However, differences appear in how these criteria are interpreted. As limited information was collected during the review, it is not possible to offer a detailed list of differences; still some general conclusions can be made. 4.3.2.1  Voluntariness of Engagement in Unpaid Work When defining volunteer work, Resolution I of the 19th ICLS, in paragraph 37 (c), interprets voluntary engagement in an unpaid activity as engagement without any “civil, legal or administrative requirement” (ILO, 2013). Many countries declared measuring volunteer work by applying the definition set by the 19th ICLS. However, the ILO review could not identify surveys that would apply this interpretation of voluntariness of engagement at the operational level, by asking specific questions. Why is this important? Because this interpretation is slightly different from the traditional one, also offered in the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011), that volunteer work means engagement out of free will, without any coercion of any type. Figure 4.2 helps understanding better this difference. It offers a classification of people doing unpaid work for others, based on how they engage in it. As shown in the diagram, people may do unpaid work voluntarily or involuntarily. Some may offer to help without being asked; others may agree to help when

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Fig. 4.2  Ways of engagement in unpaid work for others

asked. People may also work unpaid although not willing to do it, just to avoid being penalized. In the diagram, such situations are grouped in three main categories, based on the source of penalties. Of these three categories, the 19th ICLS Resolution explicitly excludes from volunteer work only unpaid work done under menace of formal penalties. “Volunteer” work required by education programmes or “community service” imposed by a court decision are examples of it. The other two categories of unpaid work done unwillingly (shown in the diagram) are not mentioned by the definition (ILO, 2013). Consequently, if following strictly the conditions set by the definition, unpaid work extracted from individuals under the menace of informal penalties should not be excluded from volunteer work. This is a more relaxed interpretation of voluntariness of engagement, compared to the one set by the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011). Theoretically, its application might result in classifying as volunteering some work done under coercion (e.g. threat of penalty coming from spouse, parent or siblings). In practice, all reviewed surveys designed to implement the definition set by the 19th ICLS applied de facto the interpretation offered in the ILO Manual. Questions to test voluntariness of engagement in unpaid work were integrated into modules developed by the ILO and were tested. In the cognitive tests, respondents did not consider work done unwillingly or under coercion when asked about “doing volunteer work or giving unpaid help without expecting a payment”. In the field test, none of the respondents reported engaging in unpaid work against own will.

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4.3.2.2  Unpaid Nature of Work Unpaid nature of work reported as volunteer work is also not specifically tested in surveys. Usually, the introduction to modules explains the scope of the questions, offering some details of what “unpaid” means. Leaving respondents to decide whether the work they did was paid or unpaid seems to be the widely accepted practical solution. Most often, as stated by the 19th ICLS definition, work is considered unpaid when no payment in exchange for the work done is received or expected. Small gifts, support in cash or in kind to enable participation in unpaid activities are not considered payment. The 19th ICLS definition sets also two important conditions for an activity to be considered unpaid: (i) the value of cash received as support should not exceed one third of the value of the wages on the local market and (ii) unpaid activities should not be performed during the time associated with employment (i.e. paid activities). Some surveys collect data on the value of the cash received as support by volunteers and on volunteering opportunities offered by employers; however, cases when such data would be used to adjust the estimates could not be identified. If reported by respondents, the value of support in cash received while volunteering could be compared to the value of the wage, but it is not clear what wage should be used as a threshold. Should it be the average wage at the national or sub-national level? Maybe it would be more efficient to compare cash received with average wages in occupations, with tasks similar to those performed by volunteers? Another concern is whether this comparison is relevant for international volunteers from developed countries giving unpaid help in less developed countries, where support received by them could be much higher than the threshold set by the international definition. Data is needed to answer these questions, and therefore tests should be conducted at both national and international level. In ILO tests, most respondents considered volunteer work or unpaid help the work done without expecting a payment, even if something would eventually be offered to them, as an expression of gratitude. Some respondents, however, argued that if the value of what is received is significant or important to the person who did the work, then the work should not be considered unpaid. With regard to the condition that unpaid work done for others during paid time should not be considered volunteering, the issue is that this exclusion comes in contrast with one of the objectives set by the 19th ICLS resolution itself: “provide comprehensive measurement of participation in all forms of work”. Cognitive tests conducted by the ILO show that there are people who combine employment with volunteering, like lawyers and psychologists offering free consultations while in their offices, during paid time. They stop performing their job tasks to answer requests for unpaid assistance and then continue with those tasks as necessary to complete the work, even after office hours, during the time that is not paid. The paid time spent doing volunteer work is compensated by the unpaid time spent doing job-related work. As all forms of work are equally important, why all time

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spent on job-related tasks, whether during or after office hours, should be carefully measured and time spent doing volunteer work should not be as such? Luckily, the current measurement practice, using the modular approach, most probably captures all the time spent in both forms of work, as data is collected independently, even when modules on volunteer work are attached to the LFSs. TUSs usually set an important limitation: total duration of all activities during one day must be equal to 24 hours. Of course, TUSs collecting data on secondary activities,2 like those conducted according to the Eurostat regulation, have the ability to capture simultaneous work. However, one of the main concerns with this approach is the completeness and the quality of data on secondary activities. For example, for the analysis of time allocated to housework by gender, availability of data on simultaneous activities is extremely important, as women tend to multitask more often than men do. Yet women often forget to report the background activities because they are part of their daily routine. Something similar may happen with direct volunteer work when combined with a similar task for own family (e.g. childcare, repairing clothes, cooking). In such situations, respondents may not even realize they are doing volunteer work, if they do it all the time. A TUS diary, for example, usually does not offer the option to ask additional questions, in order to help respondents recall simultaneous activities. When trying to measure participation and time spent in a particular background activity that is considered to be underreported in diaries, countries usually provide additional (stylized) questions to the TUS individual questionnaires. By doing this, they de facto apply the modular approach. 4.3.2.3  Work for the Benefit of Others The third concept used in definitions of volunteer work is probably the one that varies most across surveys. Before the 19th ICLS adopted the new definition, “others” were considered people who were not members of the volunteer’s household. This interpretation was also recommended by the ILO Manual, as a practical solution (ILO, 2011). Many surveys continue to apply this concept. The new definition interprets others as all people who are neither members of the volunteer’s household nor volunteer’s related family members living in other households (ILO, 2013). This means that any unpaid help given to a member of own household or to a family member living in another household cannot be considered volunteer work. Use of this interpretation raises practical issues, as it is difficult to set clear boundaries for the concept of family for statistical purposes. Given the significant variations of the concept across cultures, the international standards do not recommend a universal definition, leaving it to the respondents to decide who their family members are. It may seem that such an approach may lead

2  Activities performed simultaneously with those reported as main ones, for example, main activity, cooking; secondary activity, talking on the phone.

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to significant data comparability issues. However, it does not, as the objective is to measure unpaid work that is done willingly, with no coercion, including that applied by family. Conceptually, the difference between the ideas of household and family is significant and should lead to lower estimates of volunteers, everything else kept unchanged. The difference may not be significant for a specific country, but could be important across countries. Only carefully designed tests could help reliably estimate the impact. For example, results of cognitive tests conducted by the ILO show that when asked what family means to them, respondents’ first reaction is to consider very close people, in most cases people living in the same house, with whom they share food and other resources (household concept). Sometimes parents, siblings or own children living in other households are considered too. Other relatives, like cousins, uncles, aunts and in-laws might be also considered if respondents have very close relationships with them. Therefore, in practice, the impact of difference in concepts on estimates seems to be less significant. Still, as the strength of the relationships between relatives varies across cultures, survey designers should consider collecting additional information as to be able to establish more exactly whether the unpaid help is volunteer work or not. Limiting volunteer work only to unpaid help given to people who are non-family members is necessary in order to set operational boundaries between volunteer work and other forms of work. Setting this boundary between volunteer work and own-use production work (i.e. production of goods and services to be consumed mainly by household members or by family members living in other households) is of a particular importance, due to increasing countries’ interest in producing household satellite accounts (UNECE, 2017). The third interpretation of others identified in the review of measurement practice is registered organizations. It is applied mainly when measuring volunteer work using national legal definition. Countries applying this approach often measure direct volunteer work too, but just call it differently. Differences in the interpretation of the concept of others have certainly an impact on the coverage of different types of volunteer work. The most evident case is when volunteer work is limited to organization-­based volunteering.

4.3.3  Reference Periods Applied in Measurement As mentioned earlier, the ILO review identified important differences in types of surveys used to measure volunteer work across the world. This makes difficult a reliable assessment of differences between engagement in volunteer work of populations from different regions, notably between populations from the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, due to exclusive use of TUSs by many countries in the South.

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For example, the National Institute for Statistics of Chile using TUS data, in 2015 estimated that on a typical day 13% of people aged 12 years and over offered unpaid help to other households. For the very same year, Eurostat used the EU-SILC data to estimate that about 11% of Italy’s population aged 16 years and over did the same over a period of 12 months. Should this mean that the level of participation in direct volunteering in both countries is similar? May be. However, the chances that it is not are much higher due to significant differences in reference periods applied in both surveys, which in EU-SILC was 365 times longer than in the Chilean TUS. This offered EU-SILC more chances to capture people engaging in direct volunteer work less frequently (e.g. monthly), even occasionally (e.g. once or twice a year) in addition to those doing it regularly (e.g. daily, weekly). The Chilean TUS, by contrast, captured mostly people engaging in direct volunteer work with high frequency. Thus, it is expected that had a measurement similar to the EU-SILC been made in Chile, the resulting estimate of the engagement in direct volunteer work would have been significantly higher than in Italy. A reliable comparison can be made only with data collected using the same reference period. In this case, it would be better to compare estimates of participation in volunteer work offered by the Chilean TUS and the TUS conducted in Italy, in 2013: 13% vs. 8%. However, even this comparison may not be reliable due to different data collection periods. Section 4.3.4 addresses this issue in details. This is only one example. Overall, the ILO review identified four different reference periods applied in measurements: 1  day, 1  week, 4  weeks/1  month and 12 months/1 year. Among them, the 4 weeks/1 month and 1 week reference periods were less frequently used in the past, but are becoming more popular. The 1 week reference period is being used mostly in continuous surveys, mainly LFSs, which use the same reference period to collect data on employment. Analysis of available data shows that the use of longer reference periods results in higher estimates of people doing volunteer work. This may not be the only impact on estimates. Differences in types of volunteers captured using different reference periods could lead to biased conclusions when comparing key characteristics of volunteers and of the work they are considered to be doing. It applies not only to international comparison but also to comparison within countries. International standards on statistics of work address this issue by promoting the use of 4 weeks/1 month reference period. Adopted by statisticians at the 19th ICLS, it is considered optimal from a practical point of view: it is long enough to capture less frequent, irregular volunteering and short enough to limit recall issues during interviews. Among the elements with significant impact on estimates, the reference period seems to be the easiest one to control; therefore important progress towards enhanced comparability of data on volunteer work across countries and time within nations could be achieved by using the modular approach and the recommended 4 weeks/1 month reference period. In its cognitive tests, the ILO assessed the efficiency of two reference periods: the last 4 weeks and the last 30 days. Although there is no evidence that one of them leads to a better detection of volunteer work,

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the use of the latter seems to help respondents establish the boundaries of the reference period more precisely and with less effort. In addition to the use of a more appropriate reference period, as to produce reliable and meaningful estimates, important decisions on data collection period and measurement objectives have to be made too.

4.3.4  Data Collection Period Another element, with a potentially high impact on estimates of volunteer work, is the data collection period, in case the engagement in volunteer work and types of activities performed vary significantly during the year. The choice of the dates for field test work should be made carefully, regardless of whether measurements are made once or multiple times during a year. Yet, for different reasons, countries often do not have the flexibility to choose the most appropriate period for data collection, optimal use of resources being their main priority. In such cases, in order to obtain the expected results, adjustments to survey tools have to be made. As shown in the previous example, apparently similar participation rates in volunteer work of populations in Chile (TUS) and Italy (EU-SILC) may actually vary greatly due to different reference periods applied in measurements. Additionally, another piece of information makes the comparison of these rates even more challenging: in the Chilean TUS, data was collected between 21 September and 16 December 2015. What happens to volunteering in September–December, in Chile? Do more Chileans engage in volunteer work during this period? Is volunteer work done in September significantly different from the one done in May? Are young people more likely to volunteer during summer holidays than during the school year? Any answer to this kind of questions, before comparing estimates for Chile and Italy, is very important, as differences may be explained mainly by data collection design and not by some structural characteristics of the phenomenon in these countries. As EU-SILC measurement in Italy was made using the 12  months reference period, theoretically, estimates should not be affected by seasonality, regardless of the data collection period. In practice, however, such a long reference period may cause significant recall issues, and respondents could report mainly their more recent (closer to the data collection period) or significant (in terms of time spent or emotional involvement) volunteering experience. Comparability issues generated by using different reference and data collection periods are relevant not only for cross-country comparisons but for national comparisons across time too. For example, the Irish NSO measured volunteer work through a module attached to the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) designed to produce quarterly labour force estimates. The 4  weeks reference period was applied and data was

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collected in the third quarter of 2013. The survey estimated that almost 16% of people aged 15 years and over did direct volunteer work. How this estimate compares to that of 25% obtained 2 years later in the EU-SILC? Could this be the evidence that in Ireland engagement in direct volunteer work almost doubled in 2 years? It might be. Yet, more probably, these surveys offer two different perspectives on the same phenomenon, based on when and how much of it was measured, and cannot be used to reliably measure the change. Thus, in a relatively short time, Italy (EU-SILC) and Ireland made two measurements of direct volunteer work applying different reference periods and different data collection periods. Estimates offered by surveys are significantly different and for reasons presented in this section, cannot be compared directly. To a great extent, differences in estimates are the result of decisions made at the survey-design stage and therefore can be predicted and controlled. This fact should be taken in account when designing survey tools planned to be used in regular measurements of volunteer work as to make possible reliable assessment of changes over time. How will Italy and Ireland measure volunteer work next time, what data source(s) will be used and when and how data will be collected? If tracking changes will be one of the priorities, then NSOs will have limited flexibility in identifying solutions, different from those applied previously. Desire to compare own national estimates with other countries’ estimates from EU and other regions will generate further implementation difficulties. Trying to address these issues at the 19th ICLS and to establish a harmonized measurement approach, labour statisticians came up with the recommendation to use the 4 weeks/1 month reference period and collect data in ways that make possible the production of reliable estimates, meaningful for different types of analysis and policy objectives. The next section of this chapter offers more details on this topic.

4.4  Measurement Objectives Based on the context in which data on volunteering will be used, two types of indicators may be needed: total and/or average numbers of people doing volunteer work during a specific period. All other indicators, calculated based on the number of people (e.g. total or average number of hours worked) will be of the same type. Producing average indicators on volunteering is important if they are to be analysed in the context of other socio-economic indicators, which usually are expressed as average values too. For example, employment estimates are usually quarterly and early averages and if there is interest in comparing let’s say time spent by people in employment and volunteering, then estimates of volunteer work should also be calculated as averages.

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If, however the objective is to use indicators in the context of national accounts (e.g. for satellite accounts), then estimates of totals, like cumulated number of volunteers or of hours volunteered over a quarter or a year, should be produced. Stronger the seasonal differences in engagement in volunteer work, more important the production of indicators of the right type. Available data on employment can be used to exemplify this statement. Let’s take as example one of the key indicators of the labour market: labour productivity. It is calculated by dividing the value of a country’s GDP by the number of employed persons. For a given year, the GDP is the value of the total output in that year; in other words, it is the result of summing up outputs over shorter periods (e.g. months, quarters). The yearly number of employed persons, usually obtained from LFSs however, is calculated as an average of values for shorter periods; therefore it is always lower than the total (cumulated) number of employed who worked at least once during a quarter or a year. Consequently, not all employed contributing to the GDP are taken in account when labour productivity is calculated, leading to systematic overestimations of efficiency. In theory, there should be no bias if all employed would work during every month or quarter. In practice, however, there are several reasons for which it doesn’t happen: seasonal work, different types of leave, etc. Quarterly employment statistics offered by ILOSTAT can be used to estimate the minimum size of the bias, under the assumption that the total number of employed contributing to the GDP during 1 year should not be less than the highest quarterly value. Using the 2016 data, biases of the number of employed contributing to the GDP, ranging from 0% to 11%, were estimated for 96 countries. For some population subgroups that engage in employment less frequently and less regularly, like youth, the estimated biases are significantly higher than the average, meaning their contribution to the GDP is constantly underestimated. How these findings, in relation to employment, can help produce better measurements of volunteer work? The form of work is not relevant; the same principle applies. Frequency and regularity of involvement in the activity are the key factors to be taken in account when designing survey tools. As participation in volunteer work is usually less frequent than in other forms of work, producing the relevant type of indicators is more important. By identifying respondents who did volunteer work during the reference period, any survey can produce estimates of totals. Averages can be produced either through repeated measurements of totals or through retrospective questions, covering a longer reference period. Some countries like Colombia, Brazil and Kazakhstan use continuous surveys to collect data on volunteer work and are able to estimate monthly the total numbers of volunteers, thus revealing the seasonal pattern and averages of monthly totals over quarters and years. Yet, such a design does not offer the capacity to measure the totals over longer periods (e.g. quarters, years), needed to estimate the indicators for the analysis in the context of national accounts indicators. TUSs, similarly to continuous LFSs, can estimate short-term (usually daily) totals, averages and the seasonal pattern, but not totals over longer periods. Still, some countries intensively use TUS data in compiling national satellite accounts on

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unpaid household work. This is possible due to frequent and high participation in this form of work, most people spending at least some time daily on household chores. Unfortunately, this does not apply to volunteer work, in which much less people involve daily. Surveys using the 12 months reference period can estimate the totals over a longer period and the average monthly total but not the seasonal pattern, being unable to supply indicators for short-term analysis. Thus, this measurement approach may be convenient only if short-term analysis of volunteer work is not a priority. However, as mentioned earlier, the use of such a long reference period generates recall issues during survey interviews, making it difficult for respondents to remember details about their volunteering activities, especially when asked about the amount of the time worked. ILO cognitive tests established that asking respondents about participation in volunteer work during the last 12 months, after having asked about their volunteering experience in the last 4 weeks/30 days, helps detecting those who do volunteer work occasionally or only in specific months (e.g. in relation to specific holidays or natural phenomena). Additionally, respondents are able to provide exactly the name of the months, in which they did volunteer work. While such data can be used to estimate the total number of people volunteering during 12  months, it is not yet clear if it is suitable to be used to estimate more or less reliably the seasonal pattern of volunteer work. To be able to produce both types of indicators for both long and short-term analysis, different types of surveys should be conducted. In alternative, diversified ways to combine advantages of different approaches in one survey should be identified. Few countries have sufficient resources to conduct different surveys regularly, and when they do it, one issue arises: reconciliation of estimates from several sources. If different reference periods are applied and data is collected during different periods, then reconciliation becomes a very difficult task. One way to avoid this inconvenience is to apply multiple reference periods during the same data collection round. In one of the ILO experimental modules, the 4 weeks and 12 months reference periods were applied to estimate participation in volunteer work. Measuring engagement in volunteer work over the 4 weeks/1 month and its characteristics is the primary task. Additionally, retrospective questions are used to identify what kind of volunteer activities were performed by respondents and when during the previous 12 months. The module is not trying to estimate the time spent in volunteering activities over 12  months, only the participation. Time spent doing volunteer work can be estimated using data collected over the shorter reference period. For example, based on reported participation in volunteer work, in different months, and the average time dedicated to volunteer work during the 4 weeks, the total time spent in this form of work over 12 months could be calculated. Such estimations are based on certain assumptions and may not be very accurate, but may be a good alternative to time reported by respondents during interviews.

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4.5  Questionnaire Design: Recommendations Although difficult to estimate by analysing available review data, the impact of the questionnaire design on estimates is considered important, as shown by the results of the tests conducted by the ILO and countries. Questionnaires to which modules are attached, the number of questions in the modules, their sequence, words used, etc. may help or prevent respondents from clearly understanding the scope of the questions and can therefore influence the surveys’ capacity to capture reliably all forms of volunteering. Three factors are of critical importance at the questionnaire design stage: • If it is not a dedicated survey, questions on volunteer work should be attached to surveys collecting data on topics that can be logically linked to volunteering. Stronger the link, the better. • The link could be established either by using surveys dedicated to a specific, related topic or by asking questions on volunteer work after questions on a related topic, in a multipurpose survey. The link may be based on similarities and/or contrasts. For example, in an LFS dedicated to measuring the employment, the link is based on the similarity between the two forms of work (i.e. work for others) and the contrast (paid vs. unpaid). In a GSS, the link is mainly built on the fact that volunteer work is a form of social participation. In surveys or censuses, collecting data on multiple topics, questions on volunteer work may be placed, for example, in a section dedicated to measure different forms of work (employment, housework) or after a section dedicated to measure help/assistance received from others. In TUSs the volunteer work is positioned as a human activity among many others, in which people may engage during a day. • For example, in both modules attached to the EU-SILC and to the “Aspects of everyday life”, implemented by Istat, questions on volunteer work were placed right after the questions about relatives, friends and neighbours on whom respondents may count for help and support if needed. • In its recommendations, for multiple reasons, the ILO gives preference to attaching questions on volunteer work to LFSs. Two of these reasons are related to the issue discussed. First, LFSs usually collect only employment related data, which means there is less burden on respondents, compared to surveys collecting data on multiple topics. Second, asking questions on employment before questions on volunteer work improves comprehension of basic concepts used to define both forms of work. In addition, it highlights the boundaries between the two forms of work, leading to more clarity. • Introductions to sections containing questions on volunteer work are usually used to highlight the differences. Besides understanding what volunteer work is, respondents understand what volunteer work is not. As an increasing number of countries are implementing measurements of own-use provision of services, it may be even more efficient to ask about volunteer work after questions on this

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topic, given that it’s about the same type of unpaid activities but for the benefit of people who are not members of own family. Specific words, commonly used to describe different types of volunteer work in the national context, should be used in survey questions. Rather than using very general words to describe the scope of the questions, hoping that doing this will avoid excluding some activities and will improve data comparability across countries, it is more useful to identify the relevant words and use these during the interviews. Currently, one key recommendation made by the ILO Manual is to avoid using the expression volunteer work as it may have different meanings in different languages and countries, and to replace it with the expression unpaid non-­ compulsory activity for others. Indeed, there is evidence that in some countries the expression volunteer work is often used when referring to work done under the threat of a penalty, like work required by the education process or work imposed by authorities. However, using general terms does not add efficiency to the survey process. As revealed by the tests, after reading questions using general terms, interviewers have to spend time explaining their meaning using common words familiar to respondents. Questionnaire designers may not be aware of this. Identifying these words when designing the questionnaire, in a controlled environment, is more efficient, as it is done in a structured way, by a small team and leads to important savings of time spent interviewing thousands of households. Just translating the expression volunteer work into the survey language is not enough as it may be strongly linked to organization-based volunteering only, as proven by the current practice of countries with important experience in measurement and by the results of cognitive tests conducted by the ILO.  Cultural differences play an important factor in what volunteering means to respondents. For example, many languages use expressions originating from the Latin term voluntas, which means doing something voluntarily, of one’s free will. Some languages, like Slavic ones, add some qualitative meaning to it by adding the prefix dobro meaning good-hearted or kind to the word meaning voluntary. Other languages, especially Asian, do not mention free will and use words describing strong emotions like work of true love, from good heart or even sacrifice. Even within countries, there may be significant regional differences in words used to speak about volunteer work. It is difficult to imagine that a standard set of general words can possibly capture all these nuances. Questions should be designed using words that are meaningful to respondents; moreover, experts in the field of volunteering should be involved, ideally, in designing and testing the questionnaire. The ILO cognitive tests established that the expression volunteer work is strongly associated with organization-based volunteer work and unpaid help with direct volunteer work. Tests also highlighted the importance of choosing carefully the translation into the survey language of these expressions. Another important finding is that the expression giving unpaid help may make some respondents

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report help given to members of their own family. Therefore, one or several survey questions to identify such cases may be needed. • Participation in organization-based and direct volunteer work should be identified in separate questions. • Multipurpose and continuous surveys are increasingly implementing the practice of asking only one question as a way to make data collection less expensive. Some countries do this constantly, others in years between detailed measurements. • However, asking only one question to identify all people doing volunteer work may lead to exclusion of some types of it, especially of direct volunteer work. At least two questions, to identify the engagement in two main types of volunteer work, should be asked. • This issue is strongly related to the identification of relevant words to be used in questions, as respondents tend to use different expressions to name the two types of volunteer work. • Countries having important experience in measuring volunteer work either ask two questions on “volunteer work through/for organizations” and “unpaid help given individually” or a series of questions, sometimes up to thirty, on relevant activities for both types of volunteering. The choice of the approach depends on the data source used, data collection costs, availability of data from previous measurements and measurement objectives. • The ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) recommends asking one question to detect participation in volunteer work and a couple of recovering questions (prompts), if the answer to the first question is negative. The type of volunteering is then established as a characteristic, through an additional question. The problem with this approach is that respondents may overlook specific volunteering activities if not asked directly, including in recovery questions. This may lead to important underestimations. Surveys conducted by Istat in Italy are a good example of how to apply this principle, in order to increase measurement efficiency, in different settings. As mentioned earlier, in the EU-SILC two questions developed by Eurostat were asked: one on “unpaid participation in volunteering activities for any organization, group or association” and another on “unpaid participation in informal volunteering activities”. The second question included explanations of what informal volunteering means and some examples, which certainly increased significantly the comprehension of the question. Some EU countries, implementing the EU-SILC, did not mention the expression informal volunteering in the question at all, asking directly about giving unpaid help to others. In Italy, the module attached to the “Aspects of daily life” survey was developed following the recommendations from the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011) and improved by

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adding two multiple-choice questions on participation in twenty different specific organization-based and direct volunteering activities. Asking many questions on participation in specific activities is a good way to reduce as much as possible the underestimation of participation in volunteering. However, when applying this approach, survey designers have to find the right balance between the number of questions and the desired precision, as to avoid a higher burden on respondents. Additionally, the list of specific activities on which questions are asked should be revised before repeated measurements, in order to take into account any significant changes. If volunteer work is measured for the first time and no prior information is available, it is not recommended to apply this approach. Open questions to identify volunteering activities in which respondents involve should be asked instead. The results of the ILO tests show that engagement in volunteer work should contain at least three separate questions: one on organization-based volunteer work, another one on direct volunteer work to help other people and a third one on direct volunteer work to protect/preserve environment and help wild/street animals. As established in the ILO cognitive tests, the third question becomes useful in recovering a significant number of volunteers, as volunteer work is perceived mainly as an activity to help humans. Almost all respondents, who reported helping environment and animals in the field test conducted in Ukraine, were identified through the dedicated question.

4.6  Further Research Work Countries’ efforts to measure volunteer work, including through adoption of international statistical standards, revealed several implementation issues affecting the quality and the comparability of estimates. There is evidence that estimates may be impacted by survey elements even if the same definition is applied. Different solutions can be developed; however, due to limited resources, not all of them can be applied in data production. In order to identify the most efficient ones, taking into account the available resources and data needs, tests should be conducted by relevant national and international institutions. Research can bring the evidence that will inform the improvement of the measurement tools and guidance offered in the ILO Manual. So far, the accumulated country experiences and the results of the ILO tests have shown the benefits of applying the international standards to measure volunteer work. The use of the 4 weeks reference period helps identify participation in different types of volunteer work, while reducing the burden on respondents. Application of the family concept offers the capacity to refine the indicators, by excluding unpaid help given to related family members residing in other households, which is perceived mostly as an obligation and not as a choice. Separate identification of the

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participation in organization-based and direct volunteer work leads to more accurate estimates of the number of volunteers. Still, there are several other issues that should be addressed, as to identify solutions that will offer researchers, NSOs and other relevant organizations the capacity to produce reliable, meaningful and comparable data. Some of the solutions offered in this chapter are based on evidence coming from research; some were formulated based on assumptions, supported by observations. However, it would be very useful to conduct complex cross-cultural tests, including longitudinal ones (over 12 months) that would offer the evidence for the assessment of the efficiency of different measurement approaches. The study of volunteer work done in relation to making non-financial donations should be a research priority. As identified by the ILO cognitive tests, many people do not consider unpaid activities like collecting, preparing and delivering donated goods or products as volunteer work. The field test conducted in Ukraine identified an important number of respondents (almost 7% of the population aged 15 years and over), who did not declare doing volunteer work, but who mentioned engaging in unpaid activities while making non-financial donations. Another important area is sampling for surveys on volunteering. As less people engage in this form of work, in order to accumulate sufficient numbers of cases, survey designers have to develop specific procedures to increase the probability of capturing volunteers within available samples. The increasing interest in measuring volunteer work within smaller populations like those of refugees or internally displaced people is requesting innovative solutions. Additionally, efforts to understand better how proxy interviews influence data quality should be made. ILO tests showed that identification of volunteers through proxy interviews is less reliable. Household members may not be aware of each other’s volunteering experience. Moreover, the person providing information about other household members may intentionally provide false answers, for different reasons. It is also important to develop data collection tools that could be used to estimate volunteer work done in connection to specific events like natural disasters. Such data would be very useful to countries that are affected periodically by earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding or other calamities. Countries that have significant measurement experience build strong partnerships between NSOs and researchers. This type of collaboration should be promoted also in countries having less or no experience, as this is probably the most efficient way to develop quality survey tools and promote regular measurement of volunteer work.

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References European Parliament. (2011). Special eurobarometer. Wave 75.2. Volunteering and intergenerational solidarity, in TNS opinion & social, Brussels: European Parliament. Available at: https:// www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/eurobarometre/2011/juillet/04_07/rapport_%20eb75_2_%20 benevolat_en.pdf Eurostat. (2017). Social participation and integration statistics. European Commission. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/59861.pdf ILO. (2011). Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Geneva: International Labour Office. ILO. (2013). Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization. Geneva: International Labour Office. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/ public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/normativeinstrument/wcms_230304.pdf ILO. (2018). National practices in measuring volunteer work: A critical review. Geneva. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_636049.pdf UNV. (2018). State of the world’s volunteerism report the thread that binds – volunteerism and community resilience. Geneva. UNECE. (2017). Guide on valuing unpaid household service work, ECE/CES/STAT/2017/3. Geneva. Available at: https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/publications/2018/ ECECESSTAT20173.pdf

Chapter 5

Lessons Learned in Applying the International Official Statistical Standards to Volunteering: The Italian Experience Tania Cappadozzi, Sabrina Stoppiello, Stefania Cuicchio, and Ksenija Fonović

5.1  Issues of Method, Before and Beyond Methodology The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) implemented a module measuring volunteer work in 2013. The data gathered represented a significant innovation in investigating the organization-based and direct volunteering in Italy. The survey information provided for a significant basis for studies (Guidi et al., 2016). Not only were the data comparative internationally but helped to uncover so far hidden phenomena and unearth relationships and dynamics at play in the still scarcely studied junction between the private (individual) and the public (collective) sphere. A particular value of these data lies in re-focusing the attention of Italian scholars and practitioners on the centrality of the individual activation as the pivotal pin on which revolves not only the third sector but, more widely intended, community life.

Authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Chiara Orsini – Istat, in revising the final version of Sects. 5.2 and 5.4. The chapter is co-authored by K. Fonović (Sects. 5.1 and 5.5), S. Stoppiello (Sect. 5.2), T. Cappadozzi (Sect. 5.3) and S. Cuicchio (Sect. 5.4). T. Cappadozzi () Division for Population Register, Demographic and Living Conditions Statistics, Istat, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] S. Stoppiello Division for Structural Statistics on Businesses, Governmental and Nonprofit Organizations, Istat, Rome, Italy S. Cuicchio Division for Supply of Goods and Services and Institutional Sectors Accounts, Istat, Rome, Italy K. Fonović Csv Lazio, Rome, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_5

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This innovation in statistical methodology contributed to enriching not only the research perspectives but also to pollinate policy-making. It is important to stress though that this methodological and conceptual innovation is not an exogenous implant external to the local cultural context. On the contrary, it is strongly embedded in the Italian intellectual and civic traditions, reflected in official statistics. For this reason and in encouragement to novel implementers, we have felt important to provide an outline of the historical perspective on the development, over the past 20 years, of institutional statistics on volunteering, nonprofit and third sector in Italy. The second red thread we invite the readers to follow is the partnership-oriented approach of the statistical institute, which we deem to be an element of success. Structured consultation mechanisms and development partnerships with researchers in different disciplines and with reflexive practitioners of the field keep alive a dynamic relationship with other spheres and actors of the society. The scientific rigor that is universally recognized as the primary trait of the statistical expertise gains thus through reality checks and cutting-edge research insights, the innovative drive necessary to adapt a standard to the local reality and to the present moment. This educational potential of the institutional statistics for raising the awareness on a global connectedness of local societies is, in our opinion, an important component of the democratic function of the institutional statistics. The other intersection we invite the readers to pay attention to, with view also of fostering further comparative confrontations, regards the historical leaps of the policy environment. In Italy, the normative framework has exercised durable influence on conceptualizations and on public perceptions, even on the self-representation of the sector. It is beyond the scope of this text to discuss these implications, but it is vital to grasp the weight that national level legislation exerts on the statistical institutes. It is precisely on this terrain that the most important methodological challenges need to be met and modular solutions provided that satisfy both the international comparability and the usefulness, as well as the very comprehensibility, of national level data. This volume is situated right in the midst of one of such moments of change and potential for Italy. To illustrate this, we will mention just the most evident of examples. A major legislative reform, which revolves around the Law 106/2016, that goes under the name of the “Third Sector Code”, proposes an advanced conceptualization of the third sector, which includes social enterprises and direct volunteering, but explicitly excludes from the perimeter a whole set of social formations included in the statistical nonprofit universe as economic entities. Capturing this conceptualization in a statistical framework calls for a modular approach and a carefully designed data sources infrastructure to guarantee sustainability. It also needs an accurate reflection on the communication strategy, to policy-makers and to the wider public. Countries planning for new implementations, or working on the revision of the statistical sources on volunteering, social economy or third sector, must situate their work in the relevant geo-political context and at the same time look ahead to the future and around the world for inspiration. International standards are not antonymic to innovation and context-specificity. Rather, they represent the springboard for furthering the knowledge of the sector and for the development of

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the sector itself. Official statistics standards are not a dry mathematical exercise but rather an incentive for better conceptualizations, because the rigidity of its mechanisms does not allow us to settle for the middle ground or approximations. It is also a powerful advocacy tool for volunteering, for it names the phenomenon in the public sphere and carves out its own unique space. For Italy it worked well. In this chapter, we recount what we did and how we made it happen, with the hope that it can be of some use for other countries and for the volunteering movement in general. In a language accessible to non-statisticians, the chapter presents: the history of statistical measures of the nonprofit sector in Italy up to the recent migration onto the system of permanent censuses (5.2); data sources on organization-based and direct volunteer work and the main issues of contextualization of the ILO Manual (5.3); and the informative potential of the satellite account on the third sector and the starting requirements for its setup (5.4).

5.2  Statistics on Nonprofits in Italy 5.2.1  H  istorical Excursus: Development of the Statistical System on Nonprofit Institutions The production of official statistics on the nonprofit sector starts in Italy in the 1990s. In 1991 the 7° General Census of Industry and Services1 provided a first statistical picture of “non-commercial institutions” in Italy, including the numbers of institutions, of employees and of “volunteers” engaged in these entities, classified by economic activities. Subsequently, since 1996, surveys have been carried out on voluntary organizations registered in Regional Registries within the framework of the Italian Law on Volunteering L. 266/91 (every 2 years between 1997 and 2003). In addition, a survey with a special focus on foundations was conducted in 2005. This decade is marked by the several studies (from juridical, sociological and economic academic perspectives) and by empirical works which have developed knowledge about the main characteristics of the nonprofit sector. On the one hand the attention has been drawn to the economic and occupational impacts of this sector; on the other hand also the values and effects generated by these organizations (in terms of trust, virtuous social relationships, social capital, individual and collective well-being) have been investigated. The main restraint for research development has been linked to the availability of official data. With regard to the institutional typologies assigned to non-commercial organizations, for instance, the results have not been comparable across countries, which did not adopt standard definitions and methodologies.

1  https://ebiblio.istat.it/SebinaOpac/resource/7-censimento-generale-dellindustria-e-deiservizi-­21-ottobre-1991/IST0007718.

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In the early to mid-1990s, Istat took part in the global comparative research project led by the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU CCSS) on the characteristics and roles of the nonprofit sector in several countries. This research produced a first common definition of the sector, a common classification of nonprofit institutions with several dimensions, including activities performed, scope, sources of financing, classification between market/non-market economic activity and a standardized methodology conducting the survey on economic variables. These results drew the attention of the United Nations Statistical Commission, which adopted the methodology, and it subsequently released the Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System National Accounts (UN, 2003). This Handbook provided the methodological tool for the First Census of Private Institutions and Nonprofit Enterprises conducted by Istat in 2000. As the Handbook followed the general principles indicated by the System of National Accounts (referred to as SNA 1993) (UN, 1993) and the European System of National and Regional Accounts in the Community (referred to  as SEC 1995)  (Commission Européenne, 1996), Istat survey provided the first official statistical picture of the nonprofit sector and of its main dimensions in Italy, comparable internationally. Istat’s participation in the pilot project for testing the implementation of the Handbook allowed Italy to be at the forefront in producing official comparative statistics on the nonprofit sector. Afterwards, Istat conducted the Census of Non-profit Institutions within the General Census of Industry and Services in 2001 and in 2011, which ensured a consistent set of time series data. Particularly, the 2011 Nonprofit Census introduced significant innovations. The most important was the creation of the Registry of institutions which was the basis for creating the sample, while the gathered data filled significant information gaps.

5.2.2  Statistics on Nonprofit Institutions: State of the Art In 2016 Istat implemented a new strategy for conducting censuses: population and economic units are not surveyed every decade, but the data are gathered continuously. The permanent census method is based on periodic (annual, biennial or triennial) sampling survey integrated with information from statistical registries. Hence, the Permanent Census of Nonprofit Institutions allows Istat to produce relevant annual data on the structural characteristics of the nonprofit sector. These data are integrated with triennial sample surveys focused on social and economic dimensions and further explorations of thematic issues of Italian nonprofit institutions. In 2016 Istat implemented the First Permanent Census of Nonprofit Institutions (NPIs), by integrating the information gathered from the sample surveys and the data from the statistical register. The Census of Nonprofit Institutions aims to:

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• Update and achieve consistency of information regarding the nonprofit sector in Italy with its economic and social dimensions; gather information about ­organizational characteristics through a series of thematic sections, while ensuring the time series data. • Meet the national and international informational needs by realizing the Nonprofit Satellite Account. • Build a system of statistics comparable at the international level according to the Handbook (UN, 2003). • Increase the availability of the information in the administrative data archives. • Build a statistical register of nonprofit institutions, based on the integration of administrative sources and statistical surveys. In 2018, Istat released the Statistical Register of Nonprofit Institutions containing the data at the reference year of 2016. The Register was the first (annual) update of data collected by the 2015 Permanent Census. This updated the structural information on nonprofit institutions. Furthermore, in 2019 Istat released the statistical data of the Register at the reference year of 2017. The First Permanent Census classified the nonprofit institutions by the principal heuristic variables such as the typology of economic activity (market/non-market), the scope by the typology of beneficiaries (mutual/of public utility) and the main source of financing (public/private). Information was provided on activities performed (primary and secondary); services provided and their beneficiaries or objectives; employed human resources (paid and unpaid) and their main characteristics (categories and professional occupations); economic and financial dimensions; and products and tools of communication as well as fund-raising. The information gathered in 2016 included two thematic sections: consultation and involvement of members/workers/volunteers and of beneficiaries in the nonprofit institution governance, as well as the evaluation mechanisms and the level of relations between the institutions and stakeholders at the regional level.

5.2.3  Definitions and Classifications Adopted The definition of the nonprofit institution adopted by Istat follows the definition established by the System of National Accounts (1993 and 2008) and adopted by the Handbook (UN, 2003); it contains the prohibition on the distribution of profits from their operations (SNA 1993). Nonprofit institutions are therefore defined as: legal or social entities created for the purpose of producing goods and services whose status does not permit them to be a source of income, profit or other financial gain for the units that establish, control or finance them. (SNA 1993, UN, 1993: Sect. 4.54)

According to the structural-operational definition, the Nonprofit Institutions include all entities that are institutionalized, private, nonprofit-distributing, self-governing

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and voluntary participation. In addition to the above-mentioned requirements, in compliance with the SNA 1993 definition, Istat recognizes as requirement for nonprofit institution the identification and the classification of the overall objective, mentioned in their Statutes. Istat therefore acknowledges that the nonprofit institutions may therefore: • Be created to provide services for the benefit of the persons or corporation that control and finance them; • Be created for charitable, philanthropic or welfare reasons to provide goods and services to other persons in need; • Be intended to provide health of education services for a fee, but not for profit; • Be intended to promote the interests of pressure groups in business and politics. (SNA 1993, UN, 1993: Sect. 4.55) In the absence of a framework regulation for nonprofit organizations in the Italian law, Istat applied the official international definition by including in the observation the following types of entities: associations and committees, foundations, social cooperatives and mutuals, ecclesiastic entities, social enterprises and other private entities in pursuing nonprofit objectives. The framework law regarding the Third Sector (the Third Sector Code L. 106/2016), adopted in 2016, has reviewed and revised the existing fragmented laws and has proposed a unique definition of third sector entities. By establishing the Unique Registry of Third Sector Entities, the Law tackled the critical aspects of statistical measurement by harmonizing several administrative sources. Istat definition of nonprofit institutions is broader than the legal definition of the third sector entities, for it includes political groups and associations, trade unions, professional associations and unions, business and professional associations and community-­ based or grass-roots associations, excluded by the Third Sector Code. Istat adopted the ICNPO (International Classification of Non-profit Organizations) framework to classify the activities performed by nonprofit institutions2. The ICNPO classification is more relevant than the Ateco3 adopted by Istat for describing the typical activities of NPIs that in many cases are not highlighted in the Ateco scheme. Istat actually used both systems at the National and at the International level to classify data from the Nonprofit Census by providing a linkage between the ICNPO classification and the 2007 Ateco classification. It is worth mentioning that the item “Other activities” in the ICNPO includes economic activities linked to Ateco. Some organizations traditionally considered “productive” are relevant for the Italian

2  The ICNPO was elaborated by the JHU CCSS in the 1990s on the basis of the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC). The ICNPO was subsequently adopted as an optional classification by the UNSD and recommended by the Handbook (UN, 2003). 3  Classification of economic activities Ateco 2007 was developed by Istat and used in statistical surveys replacing Ateco 2002. Ateco is the national version of the European classification Nace Rev.2, and it was developed with the contributions of experts and representatives of public and private institutions, with the purpose to describe the peculiarities of Italian production structure, particularly regarding categories and subcategories of economic activity (Istat, 2009).

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nonprofit sector, such as agricultural activities, manufacturing activities, information and communication, housing, restaurant and catering services, etc., that are not usually identified by the ICNPO. The ICNPO was updated in 2018 when the Handbook (UN, 2018) was revised (and now includes a broader set of third sector organization activities within nonprofit sector). For the next permanent census,4 Istat will consider the opportunity of adopting the revised classification ICNP/TSO for Italy. For this purpose, analysis, revision and linkage will be conducted, by considering the time series and the characteristics of the Italian context.

5.2.4  Organization-Based Volunteering in Nonprofit Institutions Italian nonprofit census surveys have always collected information on volunteers operating in NPIs. Recently, the definition of volunteer work adopted is in line with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the 2018 Handbook,5 which in turn is well aligned also with the Third Sector Code (L. 106/2016). In the NPI Census, the volunteer is defined as: the person who provides her/his work, even if only occasionally, without any pay. A volunteer performs altruistic and solidarity activities for the benefit of other individuals or for the collectivity in general or in pursuance of the statutory objectives of the institution. Members and associates of the NPIs that perform the activity in voluntary form, of free will and without pay, for the objective of pursuing institutional mission of the organization, are also considered volunteers.

Information on the number and on the characteristics of volunteers who are active in NPIs runs the risk of overestimating, because an individual may volunteer in more than one NPI. Hence, the most important information provided by the NPI census is not of the number of volunteers but rather their distribution by sector of activity: the type of NPIs, the institutional context and, most importantly, the sector of activity. The survey also investigates whether the volunteers are also members of the NPI.

5.2.5  Relationships with Stakeholders Istat involved several institutional actors in investigating nonprofit institutions. The “Consultative Committee for the planning of the nonprofit census” (1999, 2001, 2011 and 2015) was established in 1999. The Nonprofit Consultative Committee  Planned for 2021, as established by the current National Statistical Plans (DPR, 2019).  At the time of the planning of the survey, accessible in a working version.

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includes members from relevant public institutions, academics and nonprofit sector experts and representatives. It is a channel for enhancing the dialogue between Istat and several stakeholders. The Committee has discussed the process of creating the pre-census list; the information in the questionnaire; the strategy of the communication campaign and awareness raising activities to facilitate respondents’ participation; and the tools to release and to analyse results.

5.3  Statistics on Volunteer Work in Italy 5.3.1  H  istorical Sources on Households: Methodological Issues, Problems and Gaps For the last 30  years, Istat has shown an increasing interest in gathering data on social participation and voluntary activities, on both the organization-based and on the direct varieties, which puts the Italian official statistics at the forefront of these issues in Europe. The field of research has been progressively expanded into the quality of life. Information was gathered from households about social participation, volunteering and informal help, because the measurement of the size of these social networks has been considered fundamental for the measurement of citizens’ well-being. A multi-purpose survey system (Bagatta, 2006) was developed to provide information on the social reality and on the quality of life of citizens and, thanks to the frequency of surveys, to record the main social transformations taking place in the country. The system consists of an annual survey and five different 5-year thematic survey. The annual survey “Aspects of daily life” provides information on a wide range of issues, while the other 5-yearly surveys probe deeper into specific themes (Health Conditions, Culture and Leisure Time, Security, Families and Social Subjects and Time Use). These are transversal surveys carried out at predefined intervals, conducted on the basis of a sample design with a set of standard questions that allow for the analysis of data collected in a historical series. Furthermore, the data refer to particularly large samples, representative at the national and regional levels. The annual “Aspects of daily life” (ADL) and the 5-yearly “Families and Social Subjects” (FSS) and “Time Use” surveys (TUS) are of special interest to those who study participation and voluntary activities (Table 5.1). Since 1993, the annual social survey ADL is an essential reference, not only because it contains questions on social, political and religious participation and on voluntary activities, but also because it deals with other relevant aspects such as social and institutional trust, cultural consumption, life satisfaction, and friendship and neighbourhood support. The multipurpose ADL Survey asks annually to citizens:

Share of caregivers Mean time devoted Mean time devoted

Help to other households and solidarity networks

Daily activities carried out

Indicators Volunteering rates

Theme Social participation

No

No

Yes

Yes

Partially (b), includes help to non-­cohabiting family members

Partially (b), includes help to non-­cohabiting family members

(a) The first national TUS edition was followed by the new harmonized edition in 2002; subsequently 5-yearly. (b) The definition excludes direct volunteering for community, environment or general interest.

TUS (1988) (a) 2002 5-yearly

1998 5-yearly

Official source (year of first edition and periodicity) ADL 1993 annually FSS

Characteristics of the definition used Explicit Explicit reference to reference to unpaid Includes direct vol. free will No Yes No

Table 5.1  Italian official sources on citizens involved in volunteering before the implementation of the ILO Module

Reference period 12 months

Yes

1 day

4 weeks Partially excludes activities not aimed at helping people

Includes org.-based vol. Partially - in specific types of nonprofits

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T. Cappadozzi et al. In the last 12 months have you carried out any unpaid activity for: (a) a voluntary group or organization; (b) another type of nonprofit non-governmental organization (different from voluntary organizations6); 3) a trade union 4) a political party?

These questions concern only organization-based voluntary activities and are published every year to describe the trend of social participation in the country (Istat, 2019a). In addition, within the ADL Survey, Istat conducted two focused modules on citizens volunteering in a voluntary group or organization  – in 1997 and in 2002 – and collected a broad set of indicators, including motivations for volunteering; the main types of activities carried out; the categories of beneficiaries; the type of organization or group; and the type of services provided by the group or organization. Although limited to only a certain legal-type of nonprofits, this source has therefore enabled Istat to disseminate very detailed data on the core of organized volunteering in Italy (Istat, 1998, 2004). The multipurpose FSS survey is also relevant for our field of study, because since 1998 it has explored in-depth informal solidarity networks, in particular the unpaid aid exchanged between non-cohabiting people, the number of times help was provided and the number of hours for each time. The same survey also shows aid received by households from other households and from public and private sectors. In this survey, the question used to identify aid given to other households is based on a set of prompts on unpaid activities carried out over the last 4 weeks. These include financial aid (in money or in the form of purchasing food and clothing), health aid, assistance to adults and children, companionship, hospitality, aid in the completion of bureaucratic procedures, help in domestic activities and aid in extra-­domestic activities or in studying. This question concerns only help to people (non-­cohabitant family members are included) and includes both direct and organized activities. This source reveals the share of caregivers and highlights how solidarity networks in Italy are mainly family networks in which the central role in informal care and assistance activities is that of Italian women (Istat, 2018). Finally, the Time Use Survey (TUS), conducted by Istat for the first time in 1988, and then every 5 years since 2002, reports information on daily activities on an average day of the year. This source is not based on questions but on the compilation of time use diaries, in which citizens describe the activities carried out within a 24-hour period, which are then classified according to the classification system harmonized by Eurostat (Eurostat, 2019). These classification systems identify, separately, both organization-based and direct volunteering (limited to aid to other households and therefore excluding direct volunteering for community, environment or general interest). The latter includes, jointly, both aid to non-cohabitating family members and to other families. The results of the 24-hour reference period time use diary provide therefore solid estimates of the time spent on volunteering (Cappadozzi & 6  In the Italian legal system, “voluntary organizations” are a specific type of nonprofit non-­ governmental organizations defined by Law 266/1991: based almost exclusively on volunteer work, their services are oriented to public good and free of charge for beneficiaries, and internal governance offices cannot be remunerated.

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Montella, 2019). These estimates are harmonized and collected by many countries in Europe and globally (see Chap. 4). The comparative advantage of TUS is the provision of comparable and reliable data on time use. But, TUS does not provide adequate information for estimating the number of volunteers present in a country or annual volunteer participation rates. The reason for this is the extremely short reference period. Unlike eating, sleeping and working, voluntary activities are usually not carried out on a daily basis (in most cases they are carried out a few times a month) and may not be captured during the single day referenced by the Time Use Survey. The diary estimates of the time devoted to voluntary activity should therefore be combined with those from a questionnaire with a more adequate reference period to estimate volunteering rates. In summary, historical sources on households collected by Istat are very informative in terms of improving our understanding of the phenomena of social participation, informal help networks and the daily activities of the population, and thus contribute to the measurement of the quality of life and the well-being of citizens, but are not sufficient to estimate the dimensions of voluntary work in Italy. Each of these sources collects only a part of the phenomenon of volunteering. Also, the definitions are not uniform in the various sources, and reference periods are non-­ homogeneous. This generates a blurred image of volunteering (Fig. 5.1).

40 30 20 10 0 direct (a) ADL 2013 (12 months)

organization-based FSS 2016 (1 month)

total TUS 2014 (1 day)

Fig. 5.1  Attempts to estimate volunteering rates using historical official sources on households. (a) Including help to non-cohabitant family members. (Source: Elaborations on Istat, ADL Year 2013, FSS Year 2016 and TUS Year 2014)

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5.3.2  T  he Adoption of the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work: Lessons from the Italian Implementation The awareness of the limits of the available data sources and the need to adopt a general strategy to grasp all aspects of volunteering allowed Istat to understand the opportunity offered by the dissemination in 2011 of the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. The Manual provided a new approach to the research question: the use of a standard definition and methodology to measure the basic size and characteristics of voluntary work, to estimate its economic value and to compare these data at the international level, with the aim of increasing the visibility and the credibility of volunteering with respect to national and EU policy-makers. Istat officially adopted the Manual in 2013, choosing to insert the module in the annual multi-purpose ADL survey. This stemmed from the recognition that historical sources neglected to measure all the components of volunteering and were therefore unable to capture the full dimension of the phenomenon. Above all, the previously used sources did not guarantee the possibility to compare among different national official sources, let alone to pursue international comparisons. From the beginning, a partnership7 between experts in official statistics, academics and nonprofit practitioners drew on their vast collective experience to pursue two main objectives: (1) to ensure that the adoption of the ILO standard would capture the characteristics of volunteering and informal help networks in Italy and (2) to expand the survey to include questions related to the social value(s) of volunteering. According to the ILO Manual (ILO, 2011), volunteer work refers to activities performed of free will and without pay to produce goods or provide services for others outside the volunteer’s household. Of consequence, persons in volunteer work are defined as all those who during the last 4 weeks performed any unpaid, non-compulsory activity to produce goods or provide services for others, that is, for economic units outside the volunteer’s household.8 The Manual identifies two kinds of volunteer work: organization-based volunteering (i.e. volunteer work performed for, or through organizations) and direct volunteering (i.e. volunteer work performed directly for others residing outside the household of the volunteer).

7  MESV project on “Measuring the economic and social value of volunteering” was an inter-­ institutional partnership between Istat, CSVnet – the Italian National Coordination of Volunteer Support Centers and “Volontariato e Partecipazione” Foundation (2012–2014); for details see Fonović et al. (2016). 8  This boundary has since been revised by the adoption of Resolution 1 by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians. The boundary is now placed at “the household or of related family members”. The boundary was changed to avoid the common experience of persons helping members of their immediate family who do not live with them, which most would view as part of the normal obligations of family care.

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This definition is very broad and inclusive of activities considered to be volunteer work (all activities for any type of organization are in scope and also those carried out directly to help others, provided these are unpaid and non-compulsory), while it has a rather narrow reference period to improve the memory recall. These characteristics have been understood, appreciated and shared widely by all the Italian parties called to implement the module and their respective constituencies. At the same time, the statisticians, academic experts and nonprofit practitioners all immediately recognized the challenge associated with using the household as the boundary in defining the scope of measurement in Italy. In a country with strong traditions of familial welfare such as Italy (Ferrera, 1996), family ties oblige people to provide unpaid support to their family members regardless of whether they reside in the same household or not: the reciprocal help in parent-child or grandparents-­ grandchildren relationships is not perceived to be based on the free choice of individuals and is generally understood to be in no way associated with volunteering. Every expert consulted considered these activities to be an integral part of unpaid household service work. To solve this critical element, Istat added a question about the nature of the beneficiary of the direct aid9 to the core survey module provided by the ILO Manual. This technical solution allowed to both maintain the international comparability of the data collected and to separate out from the core data on beneficiaries of volunteer work the non-cohabitating family members, in respect of the Italian understanding, clear-cut on this point. The decision on how to diffuse the data was postponed to the validation phase (Table 5.2). The fieldwork confirmed that the most critical aspect of the definition issue relates to family support. Asking respondents to refer on unpaid and non-­compulsory activities done for others was clearly interpreted by most as a question on volunteering, and this led to a strong underestimation of aid to non-cohabitating family members in the resulting data, proving the point that this form of activity is certainly not Table 5.2  Main critical elements and solutions adopted in the Italian implementation (a) Topic Critical element Definition question Household vs family (DQ) Prompting examples Survey platform

For those who answer No to DQ vs For All LFS vs social survey

Solution adopted DQ unchanged Question added on the beneficiary of direct volunteering For All Social survey (same robust estimates but more informative)

(a) See the Statistical Appendix of this Volume to analyse in detail the Italian implemented questionnaire and the comparison table with the ILO questionnaire.

9  Categories classified in the questionnaire are non-cohabiting family members; friends, acquaintances or neighbors; people previously unknown; community, environment or animals; other.

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considered to be volunteer work in the Italian conceptualization. The comparison of results with other historical sources on informal help networks (see FSS in Fig. 5.1) did not validate the data and led to the choice of ex post excluding aid to non-­ cohabitating family members. The analogous choice made by the 19th ICLS at the ILO in 2013, which separates direct volunteering from aid to non-cohabitant family members, confirmed the validity of this decision (ILO, 2013). However, the conceptualization of “family” still poses a challenge (Chap. 4). The new Handbook (UN, 2018) takes further the standardization of the measurement of volunteer work by excluding “immediate family”10 members from potential beneficiaries. Another feature of the ILO module adapted during the implementation phase concerned the indication to leave the interviewee free to establish what is meant by voluntary activities, by asking the person to answer an initial core question based on the definition, and to propose a list of prompting examples only to those who do not recognize themselves in the definition of volunteer work, that does not explicitly use the word volunteering. In the Istat experience on this topic, there were several examples of underestimation when only a question by itself was used, rather than proposing a detailed list of examples to choose from up front, the so-called list of prompts. In the module Istat implemented, all respondents had to read and respond to a set of prompts about helping activities to other people, to the community and for the environment, collected also for another national project. The fieldwork confirmed the correctness of the choice. However, in the redesign of the module for the next edition, the number of prompts will be reduced, to avoid overestimating volunteering rates due to the social desirability of the activities proposed. The last feature in which the Italian module does not follow strictly the initial recommendations of the 2011 ILO Manual concerns the survey platform indicated as the most suitable for hosting the module: the Manual proposes the Labor Force Survey (LFS), but Istat chose the annual social survey “Aspects of daily life”, which featured many of the same factors that make the LFS an appealing platform. This survey is conducted every year and already collects information on organization-­ based volunteering and social participation; like the LFS, it uses a large sample (about 21,000 households) and disseminates estimates at the regional level on several individual and household characteristics, including the employment status and the occupation, codified according to the same classification system used by the LFS and required by the ILO Manual (Isco-08). There were serious reasons for rejecting the LFS, which is heavily over-burdened by the presence each year of ad hoc modules requested by Eurostat. The LFS questionnaires are very strictly bound to the importance of the indicators collected, so Istat prefers to minimize the changes to this survey, in order not to influence these indicators and avoid any risk of confusion between paid and unpaid work. This choice of methodological conservatism

 The “immediate family” or “next of kin”, which can be taken to mean parents, grandparents, siblings, children and grandchildren of household members (UN, 2018: 57).

10

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reflects also wider societal concerns. On the one hand, work statistics are under eager public scrutiny in Italy due to high rates of unemployment and under-employment of certain societal groups (youth, women) and propagation of precarious work modalities. On the other hand, statistical and academic communities re-defining the boundaries between different forms of professional, family, domestic and voluntary work have registered in this period unprecedented advancements (ILO, 2013, 2018a, 2018b), which further corroborates the necessity to avoid any possible jeopardy to consolidated time series of paid work statistics. A minor, but in any case relevant, adaptation concerned the list of the types of organizations, enlarged from the four proposed by the Manual to 14 items, mainly thanks to the expertise of nonprofit practitioners, in order to represent the Italian associative reality to most detail possible. As required, all core variables identified by the ILO Manual to describe volunteer work are included in the Italian module: the number of volunteers; the number of hours volunteered; the type of work performed (i.e. occupation) and, for organization-­based volunteer work, the institutional setting of the work performed and the field (industry). These data items were selected as the minimum needed to portray the economic scale of volunteer work and to meet the requirement of integrating a picture of volunteer work into the satellite accounts of NPIs called for by the United Nations Handbook on Non-profit Institutions in the System of National Accounts (UN, 2003).

5.3.3  Values Added through the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Last but not the least, thanks to the agreement between Istat and representatives of the third sector, the Italian module was extended by inserting additional questions to probe further on social dimensions. These additional questions were designed through a Delphi method consultation with academic experts. For the organization-­ based volunteers, the module added questions about the motivations for volunteering, the personal consequences of doing so and the multiple membership (people volunteering in more than one organization). As regards direct volunteers, the module segmented the beneficiaries of the activity. The duration of the commitment was registered for both organization-based and direct volunteers (see Statistical Appendix). The guidelines for the interviewers were also prepared by recurring for expertise to nonprofit practitioners and to Istat staff that deals with the coding of occupations in the Labor Force Survey. To prepare the coding guidelines, we started by translating and contextualizing the large list of typical activities (with relevant ISCO codes) provided by the ILO Manual, which was then further expanded to reflect the Italian specificities and current trends. The training of the interviewers was conducted in collaboration with the national network of volunteer support centres, whose team of

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experts also supported the interviewers during the fieldwork by resolving their doubts, coaching them through the delivery of questions that had been previously unfamiliar and in particular, resolving challenges in the coding of voluntary activities. In conclusion, the results obtained from the implementation of the ILO module affirm that Italy has standardized comparable estimates on organization-based and direct volunteering that provide a valid basis for the development of the part of the NPI satellite account that concerns voluntary work. In particular, the total annual hours of voluntary work, a fundamental piece of information needed for the satellite account, was validated through the estimates of the Time Use Survey, demonstrating the validity of the information collected, with a much simpler and less expensive tool than time use diaries (Cappadozzi & Montella, 2019).

5.4  Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions 5.4.1  T  he System of National Accounts: How It Works and Which Are Its Limitations for an Adequate Representation of the Third Sector The National Accounts (NA) provide an integrated framework of the activities performed by the economic agents on their territory of residence by a given period of time (1 year or one quarter). The international standards established by the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) (UN et al., 2009) and, for the European Countries, by the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010) (Eurostat, 2013), give a statistical framework that ensures the accuracy, the exhaustiveness and the international comparability of the macroeconomic estimates. Consistent criteria identify the referred statistical units (the institutional unit and local kind-of-activity units) and the accounting rules to measure the types of transactions (flows and stocks) to be represented in the system of the national accounts. The activity of the institutional units is described in the different phases of the economic process: the contribution to create the domestic product in the several industries; the impact of the distributive and re-distributive transactions on the disposable income available for consumption and investment expenditure purposes; the kind of goods and services, free or paid, consumed by households; the investment activities; and the processes of accumulation of real and financial assets. The institutional units are economic entities characterized by uniformity of behaviour and a decision-making autonomy in exercising their principal function. Their main function can consist in the production of goods and services, in the consumption activities or in the redistribution activities of income and/or wealth. In this regard, institutional units are households, public producers recognized as

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independent legal entities, joint-stock and limited liability companies, cooperatives, unlimited partnerships, sole proprietorships with decision-making autonomy and nonprofit institutions (NPIs) recognized as independent legal entities. The NPIs are: juridical or social entities finalized to the production of goods and services, whose status does not consent them to represent a source of income, profits or other financial gain for the units that have founded it or control or finance them. If their productive activities entail the formation of surplus, no other institutional unit can benefit from these. (Eurostat, 2013: Sect. 3.31; UN et al., 2009: Sect. 4.83)

Only legally established NPIs are included in the NA, because the institutions owning an autonomous organizational form can be identified separately from the units that constitute, finance and/or manage them. It is worth mentioning that this approach, based on the formal registration of organizations within the existing legal systems, may overlook, particularly in developed countries, the units that operate as non-formalized entities and whose role, recognized in the civil society sphere, remains invisible to official statistics. The institutional units are grouped into institutional sectors according to their economic behaviour defined by the following criteria: type of control (public or private producer); kind of resources allocated to financing the production costs (market or non-market producers of goods and producers for own private use); and kind of goods and services provided (financial and non-financial goods and services) (Fig. 5.2).

5.4.2  T  easing out the NPIs Hidden in the System of National Accounts In the NA, NPIs are classified in several institutional sectors because they can have different organizational structures, sizes and sources of revenue. Hence, information on NPIs is spread out among the sectors, and therefore they are associated with other types of institutional units. The only exception is for the non-market private NPIs, producers of non-financial services for households, which are classified in the sector of the “Nonprofit Institutions Serving Households” (NPISHs). Only for those NPIs, the NA describes all the economic process phases in traditional national accounting procedures (Table 5.3). The financial and non-financial corporations’ sectors include the market NPIs (NPIS.12 and NPIS.11), both public and private, whose production costs are covered for at least 50% from the revenues obtained by the sale of goods and services

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Type of Institutional Unit

Sector of SNA System

Households (S.14)

Households

Private producer

Corporations Market producer NPIs

Goods and nonfinancial services

NonFinancial corporation (S.11)

Financial services

Financial corporation (S.12)

Non-market producer

NPISHs (S.15)

Corporations, NPIs

Market producer

General Government units, NPIs

Non- Market producer

Public producer General Government (S.13)

Fig. 5.2  Allocation of resident units to the institutional sectors

Table 5.3  Institutional units classified in the sector of System of National Accounts

Type of Institutional Unit Corporations Government Households NPIs

Sector of SNA System Financial Corps Non financial (S.12) Corps (S.11) NFC FC

Government (S.13)

Households (S.14)

NPISH (S.15)

HH NPIS.14

NPIS.15

GG NPIS.11

NPIS.12

NPIS.13

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produced.11 Their output corresponds to sale revenues at market prices. With regard to other private producers, the market NPIs may contain the sale prices because their selling strategy does not have to take into account the return on invested capital; contributions and transfers received by other economic agents may be allocated to finance a share of their productive costs; they may be eligible for tax relief according to their particular economic nature (UN et al., 2009: Sect. 4.86). Public non-market NPIs are classified in the general government sector (NPIS.13), while private non-market NPIs are grouped in the NPISHs sector (NPIS.15). What is a non-market NPI? What is the difference between a public and a private NPI? The NPISHs sector includes the mutuals that produce goods and services mainly for their members, financed by membership fees, and the NPIs that are created for philanthropic purposes whose resources are derived mainly from donations in money or in kind. The non-market NPIs output is defined as the sum of production costs sustained for the production activities (Eurostat, 2013: Sect. 3.16). These units distribute goods and services for free or at not economically significant prices, so the sale turnover underestimates the economic value of their output. National accounting schemes provide an adequate description of the activity of private non-market NPIs and allow for an integrated representation of the redistributive tasks pursued by these units: their output (the estimated value of the goods and services supplied free of charge) measures the resources provided to households that otherwise would not be able to consume these kind of goods and services. In the system of accounts, the social transfers in kind increase the actual final consumption of the households and the available resources accordingly. On the other hand, the market NPIs, spread in the financial and non-financial corporation sectors with other market units, lack an adequate statistical representation. Moreover, in the accounting system only the operations measurable in monetary terms are represented. Therefore, all services supplied free of charge whereby no expenses have been sustained  – such as those realized through unpaid volunteer work12 and, by convention, the secondary non-market activities carried out by market producers – are excluded from the accounting computations.  The production costs are equal to the sum of intermediate consumption, compensation of employees, consumption of fixed capital and other taxes on production. Sales shall mean the sales excluding taxes on products but including all payments made by general government or the European institutions linked to the volume or value of output, but excluding payments to cover an overall deficit or settle debts (Eurostat, 2013: Sect. 3.33). In the case of private non-profit institutions serving businesses, the subscriptions from the group of businesses concerned are treated not as transfers but as payments for services rendered, i.e. as sales (Eurostat, 2013: Sect. 3.35). 12  Production includes volunteer activities that result in goods. Examples of those activities are the construction of a dwelling, church or other building. Volunteer activities that do not result in goods are excluded (Eurostat, 2013: Sect. 3.08). 11

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5.4.3  A  n Innovation Element: The Satellite Account of the Third Sector National accounting procedures avoid a complete and integrated representation of the economic behaviour and the tasks of the nonprofit sector units as a whole. Furthermore, the accounting system does not provide a comprehensive overview of the relations and the synergies between NPIs and other economic agents, which are competitors in producing goods and services (enterprises and government), or which are the final beneficiaries of their output (households, enterprises, government). Meanwhile, the growing interest of Public Authorities and of academic researchers for the nonprofit sector has further increased the information needs. Moreover, the degree of detail required by stakeholders may not be easily inferred by the standard accounting schemes. The response to nonprofit information needs may be provided by a satellite account for the nonprofit sector, which can be further extended to include the institutional units belonged to the Third Sector. A satellite account integrates the available information for NPISHs units with data concerning the market NPIs and other third sector units classified in several institutional sectors (Fig. 5.3). Satellite accounts are a tool to satisfy specific knowledge needs and to develop an integrated study of specific economic sector. They are anchored to the core of the accounting system but may adopt additional or alternative, but not inconsistent, definitions and analytical concepts. They are a propulsive element to enhance statistical information availability for the users and an important factor to expand the current national accounting schemes.

Fig. 5.3  The Conceptualization Scheme of the Third or Social Economy (TSE) Sector. (Source: Salamon 2016, available at: https://ccss.jhu.edu/unsd-­presentation/)

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The first step in implementing the satellite account on NPIs, and the Third sector as a whole, requires a definition of the institution in-scope universe. The reference manuals require additional selection criteria of the NPIs identified by SNA 2008 and ESA 2010 rules (UN, 2003, 2018). The satellite account must include the institutional units that respond to the following criteria: presence of an organizational structure that defines its formal constitution; total (for NPIs) or strong limitations (for cooperatives and social enterprises) on their capacity to distribute profits to owners or shareholders in any form; independence from other institutional units (they must be self-governing); voluntary participation of members; and private nature. Within the framework of the satellite account, the boundaries of the production activities may be enlarged. The output of NPIs can be integrated by measuring the services provided through unpaid work and by including the secondary non-market activities carried out by market NPIs. The enlargement of the production boundary changes the structure of the institutional sector output wherein the units are classified. Concerning the NPISHs sector, the production increases through estimating the services produced by unpaid volunteers engaged in private non-market NPIs. For the market NPIs, the inclusion of secondary non-market activities and of the voluntary work introduces a new output component  – the non-market output  – which is currently not included in the basic accounting scheme. Finally, the satellite account brings out the activities of NPIs which employ exclusively volunteers. In the standard accounting schemes, these NPIs do not contribute to the production process because they are seen exclusively as final consumers and classified in the household sector. Such enlargement of the production boundary increases the value added of the sectors and, therefore, the gross domestic product, the gross disposable income and the estimate of goods and services actually consumed free of charge by the households, accordingly. Following the accounting rules, the non-monetary components of the production increase the gross adjusted disposable income of the households but also their final actual consumption. In this way, any change affects the gross savings, as well as the net lending or net borrowing of the institutional sectors.

5.4.4  Italian Nonprofit Satellite Account: Work in Progress In the past two decades, Italy has progressively developed a comprehensive information system for identifying and assessing the resident NPIs activity in the NA. The statistical information, provided by the census and sample surveys on nonprofit sector, has been integrated and updated by using data from administrative sources. In 2018 and 2019 an extraordinary revision of the NA estimates was

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ongoing.13 NA data, disseminated in September 2019, included the latest information for the nonprofit sector processed by Istat (Istat, 2019b). In 2015, the NPI survey provided information on the structure, organization, control and economic behaviour of the surveyed units. The current strategy planned for NPI surveys will ensure the availability of information on the 3-yearly basis. In 2017, Istat developed a system of registers that provide information on the structure of all resident institutional units (enterprises, private and public institutions), their turnover, persons employed, legal form and economic sector of activity. The Register ensures the identification of all NPIs active in Italy. The new information system integrates information on NPIs structure with data on financial economic statements from administrative and fiscal sources at the micro level. It allowed to implement methodologies to estimate the complete set of standard accounts and several variables required by the definitions and concepts of the satellite account. Moreover, creating and implementing the unique public registry of the third sector entities, as planned by the Third Sector Code (L. 106/2016), is crucial to achieve a complete information-base necessary for the satellite accounts, by increasing the quantity and the quality of the administrative information for nonprofit economic operators.

5.4.5  Issues of Perimeter: A Modular Approach Defining the reference universe of NPIs the satellite account requires, first of all, the identification and the exclusion of public market NPIs. The critical issue is to collect information on the type of control of the NPIs which are not included in the sample surveys. Following a modular approach, the enlargement of the reference universe to other third sector units might be difficult for some types of economic agents. Cooperatives other than social cooperatives and mutuals may be identified by the Business register (ASIA) and the Statistical information system for estimating structural economic variables on business accounts (Frame-SBS).14 On the other hand, the identification of other types of institutional units, such as social enterprises, is challenging, as it requires the availability of specific information that cannot be indirectly inferred by statistical criteria. With regard to the enlargement of the production boundary in the satellite account, the information available does not allow for a direct estimation of the  Periodical benchmark revisions of the NAs are planned at EU level. Every 5 years, European countries shall reassess sources and methods used in national accounts estimates. 14  Frame-SBS is a statistical register of annual financial statements of active enterprises included in the ASIA-Enterprises business register (about 4.4 million units). The compilation of the register is based on the massive use of administrative and fiscal data as the primary source of information, complemented by statistical survey data. 13

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secondary non-market activities potentially carried out by market producers. However, an indirect approach may be applied to solve some problems. For each market institutional unit, we can evaluate the coverage degree of production costs ensured by the revenues from sales. In case that only partial coverage is available, the difference may be associated to the presence of a secondary non-market activity, whose production is not exchanged on the market and it can be estimated based on the difference between the production costs and the revenues. Concerning the measurement of the services carried out by volunteers, various problematic aspects need to be addressed. The measurement of the voluntary work employed and the reference salary are crucial items for the assessment in monetary terms. As far as the estimation of volunteer work is concerned, the information is collected from the units (institutions and enterprises) that organize voluntary work and from the households engaged in volunteering. Generally speaking, from the demand-side, surveys on nonprofit sector give reliable information to identify the sectors of economic activity where the voluntary work takes place, while showing a limited measurement capacity for the amount of the voluntary work carried out. From the supply-side, surveys on households ensure quality in estimating the work provided by volunteers, while remaining unsuitable to identify the economic sector where volunteering takes place (individuals do not always know the NPI legal form or the full scope of activities). Despite consistent definitions, reconciling the information available across different domains is not an easy process, due to differences in the observation scopes and in reference period. Following the approach of the satellite accounts on NPIs and voluntary work, the contribution of voluntary work to gross domestic product at the aggregate level, without details on the institutional sectors and/or on the economic activity sectors, can be estimated. For the purpose of the aggregate level estimation, specific information on the professional status and on the sectors of economic activity in the assessment of the volunteer work are not required.

5.5  Data: Infrastructure for Human Development In this chapter the authors made the attempt to share the experience, the method and the approach of the Italian Statistical Institute (Istat) in bringing to public attention and scholarly use the characters and the values of volunteering, embedded, on the one hand, in the measurement of the third sector of which it constitutes one of the fundamental driving forces, and, on the other hand, part and parcel of the tissue of social statistics revealing the behaviours of individuals and families. We have taken a historical approach, in order to render evident the importance of a robust institutional culture oriented to integrating different sources of expertise, within and outside of the statistical institute. Therefore, representing quite a rupture in the siloed tradition of academic and methodological writing, the chapter joins statistical

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experts from different departments (population and households daily life, public administration and private institutions, national accounts) and a third sector practitioner, who have built an inter-sectoral ongoing collaboration aiming at an ever better production, integration and dissemination of data on the third sector and volunteering. The Italian methodological experience is presented in this chapter in the spirit of identifying lessons learned, in hope it can provide references and stimuli to statisticians and stakeholders with a vested interest in volunteering in other countries. Our objective is to render visible an emerging need for bringing together nonprofit and volunteering expertise within the international statistical community. Statistics are not just results in numbers. Data are a product of a culture, historically and geographically situated, and can yield an incomparably better harvest if generated and put to use in interaction with the protagonists of the field. In this, academic researchers and policy circles represent traditionally well-accredited stakeholders of the official statistics. This is not necessarily valid for third sector practitioners and networks. In part, inhomogeneity of representation, data illiteracy and wide diversity of interests of the third sector make it difficult to establish and maintain structured inter-institutional platforms for discussion and learning. On the other hand, for want of economic and cultural resources, it is extremely difficult for the sector to affirm its potentials for contributing as protagonist the expertise, intuitions and knowledge from the field. Academic researchers should take on, within the third mission of the university, the involvement of and the support to third sector entities, in order to sustain and nurture their capacity to contribute the specific practitioners’ viewpoints and outreach capacities also to the institutional statistics processes. In turn, third sector organizations can offer to both statistical and academic communities new paths for the validation, dissemination and policy use of data. In conclusion, we affirm that the Italian model of multi-stakeholder partnership for good data on volunteering and third sector has been a success and has significantly advanced knowledge. Yet, there remain to be critically assessed the still un-­ fathomed grey areas of fuzzy or partial knowledge, the scattered archipelagos that reveal themselves only once the continents have been chartered. One such grey area of particular interest, where third sector and social movements’ studies intersect, mostly in the dark, is the activism of non-formalized groups and of loose grass-roots activities, on which better data on direct volunteer work could offer better insight. Another terrain that the globally comparative data on volunteer work could contribute to larger academic fields regards the individual and social determinants for voluntary engagement. Uncovering the constants of free-will unpaid human behaviour in different cultural environments and at different stages of modernity could significantly contribute to deepening our understanding of universal values of individual action for general interest. This is just to name a few of the curiosities that working with the Istat data have brought to us and that we wish to share with the readers, also in view of developing new mechanisms of social impacts accountability that see in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) their ultimate horizon.

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References Bagatta, G. (2006). Il sistema di indagini sociali multiscopo, Metodi e Norme, 31. Roma: Istat. Available at: https://www.istat.it/it/files/2014/06/met_-­norme_06_31_il_sistema_di_indagini_ multiscopo.pdf  Cappadozzi, T., & Montella, M. (2019). Il lavoro non retribuito e il valore della produzione familiare. In T.  Cappadozzi (Ed.), I tempi della vita quotidiana. Lavoro, conciliazione, parità di genere e benessere soggettivo (pp. 13–35). Temi. Roma: Istat.  Available at: https://www.istat. it/en/archivio/230110 Commission Européenne. (1996). Système européen des comptes  - SEC 1995. Luxembourg: Office des publications officielles des Communautés européennes. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3859598/5826325/CA-15-96-001-FR.pdf/ a1085788-b45f-4a06-be73-00159cabcc38 DPR (2019). Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica 20 maggio 2019 di approvazione del Programma statistico nazionale 2017-2019 - Aggiornamento 2018-2019 e del collegato elenco delle rilevazioni con obbligo di risposta per i soggetti privati. GU  - serie gen. n.165 del 16 luglio 2019. S.O.n. 30 Eurostat. (2019). Harmonised European Time Use Surveys (HETUS), 2018 guidelines. Luxembourg: European Union. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/ products-manuals-and-guidelines/-/KS-GQ-19-003 Eurostat. (2013). European system of accounts. ESA 2010. Luxembourg: European Union. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3859598/5925693/KS-02-13-269-EN. PDF/44cd9d01-bc64-40e5-bd40-d17df0c69334 Ferrera, M. (1996). The ‘southern model’ of welfare in social Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 6(14), 17–37. Fonovic, K., Guidi, R., & Cappadozzi, T. (2016). Can one size fit all? testing the ILO manual for the measurement of volunteer work as a tool for global reporting on sustainable development goals, ISTR 2012 Conference Working Papers Series, International Society for Third Sector Research. Guidi, R., Fonović, K., & Cappadozzi, T. (2016). Volontari e attività volontarie in Italia. Antecedenti, impatti, esplorazioni. Bologna: il Mulino. ILO. (2011). Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Genève: International Labour Office. ILO. (2013). Resolution concerning statistics of work. In Employment and labour underutilization. Genève: International Labour Office.  ILO. (2018a). Resolution concerning statistics on work relationships. Genève: International Labour Office.  ILO. (2018b). Survey methods to improve measurement of paid and unpaid work: Country practices in time-use measurement. Genève: International Labour Office.  Istat. (1998). Il volontariato in La situazione del Paese nel 1997 (pp. 265–278). Rome: ISTAT. Istat. (2004). La partecipazione dei cittadini alle attività di volontariato in La situazione del Paese nel 2003 (pp. 359–366). Rome: ISTAT.  Istat. (2009). Classification of Economic Activities Ateco 2007 Derived from Nace Rev. 2. Istat: Rome. Istat. (2018). La popolazione, le reti e le relazioni sociali. In Rapporto annuale 2018. Roma: Istat.  Istat. (2019a). Elezioni e attività politica e sociale. In Annuario statistico Italiano. Rome: Istat.  Istat. (2019b). Annual National Account. Rome: Istat.  Salamon, L. M. (2016). Measuring the Contribution of Non-profit Institutions, the Social Economy, and Volunteering to the Economy and Well-being. Work presented at the 47th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission on March 8, 2016 in New York. Available at: https:// ccss.jhu.edu/unsd-presentation/ United Nations, European Commission, IMF, OECD, World Bank. (1993). System of National Accounts 1993, Series F., No. 2/Rev.4, Brussels/Luxembourg, New  York, Paris, Washington, D.C. 

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United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs  – Statistics Division. (2003). Handbook on Non-profit Institutions in the System of National Accounts, Studies in Methods, Series F., No. 91, New York. United Nations, European Commission, IMF, OECD, World Bank. (2009). System of National Accounts 2008, Series F., No. 2/Rev.5, New York. United Nations, & Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division. (2018). Satellite Account on Nonprofit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work. New York: UN.

Part II

Volunteering in Italy. A Test-Bed for the Global Statistical Standards

Chapter 6

Heterogeneity of Context, Varieties of Volunteering: The Italian Case in an International Perspective Riccardo Guidi

6.1  Introduction Contemporary societies are more complex than those of the past, and the same seems to apply to volunteering. Nevertheless, a full account of the varieties of volunteering in relation to the heterogeneity of the context is still missing. While expert practitioners have long recognized that volunteering is articulated in a plurality of patterns, official statistical agencies and the big international survey programmes (e.g. World Value Survey, European Social Survey, etc.) have been less perceptive. During the last 20  years, data provided through such authoritative sources have robustly contributed to develop knowledge on volunteering, but they have failed to provide sufficient ground for intra- and cross-national analyses of the different traits (subjective meanings, organizational intermediations, practical manifestations, possible societal impacts, etc.). Accounting for the varieties of volunteering has been so far largely limited to local in-depth investigations, single nation studies or occasional cross-country comparisons. A noticeable transformation seems to be underway thanks to the recent adoption of global standards on volunteer work (ILO, 2011; UN, 2018) and the ensuing implementation by national statistical agencies (see Part I of this Volume). While the international standards on volunteering have been so far mainly appreciated as a way to better compare rates of volunteering cross-nationally and to account for their economic value, they appear to have a much wider potential to further social research on volunteering. Their implementation within national official statistics may give an unprecedented chance to fully account for the complexity of volunteering at different scales, beyond simple descriptions – that is, they may allow us to analyse the varieties of volunteering in relation to the varieties of societal traits of

R. Guidi () Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_6

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regions and countries all over the world. It would be a real step forward for international research on volunteering. The aim of this chapter is to establish an initial ground for the situated analysis of the varieties of volunteering made possible by internationally standardized official data. The analytical framework proposed (Sect. 6.2) follows the basic assumption of the “social embeddedness” theory, according to which volunteering is a context-dependent phenomenon. This hypothesis is developed here in a complexity-­ driven perspective, by addressing the domestic differentiation of complex countries (independent variables side), the heterogeneity of volunteering (dependent variables side) and the intricacy of their possible relationships (methodological side). As a result, this chapter advances the hypothesis that the domestic territorial differences of complex countries, in the interplay with family and individual-level features, significantly contribute to differentiate crucial traits of volunteering. A direct consequence of this pluralization is that countries (NUTS 0) cannot be considered the unique unit for comparing volunteering in the world, cross-regional (NUTS 1+) comparative analyses being relevant as well.1 This hypothesis is then tested in the Italian context (Sect. 6.3). Within the path traced over the last 60 years by scholars such as Banfield (1958), Almond and Verba (1963) and Putnam (1993) – but in part differently from their views – modern Italy is considered here an outstanding “research observatory” for investigating the varieties of volunteering in relation to the varieties of context(s) in complex countries. This particular perspective on Italy is justified by its wide, sedimented and systemic domestic heterogeneity, which makes the operation of the “antecedents” of volunteering highly differentiated between territories. Finally (Sect. 6.4), the chapter identifies the major obstacle to a situated analysis of the varieties of volunteering as being a lack of appropriate data and postulates that an opportunity to overcome this obstacle is offered by the national implementation of the new global statistical standards (ILO, 2011; UN, 2018).

6.2  A  ccounting for the Varieties of Volunteering in Complex Countries: The Social Embeddedness Hypothesis Revised Volunteering has its own complex ecology. Situating the various aspects of volunteering “in a dynamic interplay with the broader social, structural, and cultural environment” is “essential” since people are structurally embedded in “nested ecological 1  Since 1970s, the NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) classification is used as a single, coherent, hierarchical system for dividing up the European territory in order to produce sub-national statistics. NUTS 0 refers to the state level, NUTS 1 signifies major socio-economic regions, NUTS 2 refers to the basic regions for the application of regional policies and NUTS 3+ means small areas for specific diagnoses. The NUTS 2021 classification lists 104 areas at NUTS 1, 283 areas at NUTS 2 and 1345 areas at NUTS 3 level in Europe (see https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions-and-cities).

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systems” – micro (e.g. group), meso (e.g. voluntary organization) and macro (e.g. region) – before, during and after they volunteer (Hustinx et al., 2010: 425). While determinants at micro and meso levels are more understandable, defining how macro context affects volunteering is challenging. Two strands of literature address this issue (Hustinx et al., 2010: 425). The first, having an explicitly explanatory and comparative perspective, shows the dependence of the nonprofit and volunteering sector on long-term economic, political and cultural factors (long-­term embeddedness) (Salamon & Anheier, 1998; Salamon & Sokolowski, 2003; Inglehart, 2003; Hodginkson 2003; Schofer & Fourcade-Gourinchas, 2001). The second, with a narrative orientation, illustrates the impact of the wide transformations experienced by the (Western) societies over recent decades on volunteering, mainly modernization and individualization (dynamic embeddedness) (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003). While the two strands have many differences, they allow us to formulate a comprehensive “social embeddedness hypothesis” according to which the traits of volunteering depend on the sedimented characteristics of the social context (e.g. type of welfare regime) and are affected by the changes that happen at the macro level (e.g. the evolutions of modernity).

6.2.1  Making Social Embeddedness Hypothesis Multi-Scalar Scholars have so far mainly scrutinized the connections between volunteering and the context by adopting a cross-country comparative perspective (NUTS 0 level). Sometimes the preference for this scale has been due to the structure of samples and data (e.g. European Social Survey, World Value Survey) which have not allowed investigations at a lower level. Sometimes the decision to analyse at this level appears to be guided by nineteenth-century “methodological nationalism”, which: Equates society with nation-state societies, and sees states and their governments as the cornerstones of a social sciences analysis (Beck, 2007: 287).

Although the importance of the processes at the state level is indisputable, attention to the sub-national scale is also crucial (Brenner, 1999; Kazepov, 2010; Storper, 1997). In recent decades the sub-national scale has increased in relevance because of a whole array of state reforms aimed at reconfiguring polity by putting “the local” first, for example, through the adoption of the principle of subsidiarity in the institutional governance of welfare policies (Kazepov, 2010). The sub-national scale has been shown to be relevant for the configuration of the public sphere and volunteering (Rotolo & Wilson, 2012; Wagner, 2000). Bearing in mind these social changes, the “social embeddedness hypothesis” can thus be re-scaled to predict that sub-national features (NUTS 1+) exert an influence on volunteering, perhaps different from what is found at the national level (NUTS 0). In complex countries the context should therefore be considered plural, research designs should recognize sub-national variations and analyses should include

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indicators intended to explain them. Comparative analysis is thereby reconfigured: research compares different regions (in a single country or not) (NUTS 1+) rather than states (NUTS 0).

6.2.2  C  onnecting Social Embeddedness Hypothesis to Mesoand Micro-Level Features The use of the “social embeddedness hypothesis” should be careful to avoid the risk of contextual determinism. Although the statement that the context (macro) affects the voluntary action (micro) sounds sociologically plausible, a multitude of meso-­ level agencies (organizations, groups, families, etc.) is positioned in the macro-­ micro trajectory and plays a role in mediating the impact of the general context. Moreover, individual-level characteristics have been proven to affect volunteering in different national contexts – as proposed, for example, by the “dominant status” and “resources” theories (Lemon et al., 1972; Smith, 1994; Wilson & Musick, 1997). Assuming the dependence of volunteering on the macro-context does not exclude recognizing the relevance of meso- and micro-level features. The “social embeddedness hypothesis” would benefit from considering that macro-level features (NUTS 0+) do not affect the traits of volunteering per se, but only in the interplay with meso- (organizations, groups, families, etc.) and micro- (individuals) level features. As a consequence, complex theoretical models and multi-level analyses focused on the possible interplay between macro-, meso- and micro-level features are the best ways for accounting for the varieties of volunteering accordingly to the varieties of contexts.

6.2.3  D  efining the Multiple Contextual Features Affecting Volunteering The “social embeddedness hypothesis” can also benefit from a full acknowledgement of the multiple influences that the context may exert on volunteering. Following Wilson, the question to address is: Why might social context make any difference to volunteering, in addition to individual characteristics? (Wilson, 2012: 201)

While catching a single fundamental mechanism is probably impossible and inappropriate, authoritative theories help to take into account different contextual influences. According to the “social origins theory” (Salamon & Anheier, 1998), the traits of the welfare institutions – intended as sedimentations of social conflicts in the age of

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industrialization – primarily affect volunteering (institutional rooting of volunteering). Government social welfare spending contributes to the expansion of the nonprofit sector, which in turn creates more opportunities to volunteer. The characteristics of the social-democratic welfare regime would facilitate an “expressive” orientation of volunteering, while liberal, corporatist and statist welfare regimes would be connected to the preeminence of a “service-oriented” volunteering (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2003). Following the post-materialist theory (Inglehart, 1990, 2003), the dominant constellation of values in a context has a major impact on volunteering (cultural rooting of volunteering). Societies that place relatively strong emphasis on post-materialist values have higher volunteer rates than those that do not. This means that economic development – by driving the cultural change – “tends to produce rising levels of volunteering” (Inglehart, 2003, p. 95). Other theories put culture first in accounting for the contextual influences on volunteering. The social-constructionist approach to motivations to volunteer (Dekker & Halman, 2003; Hustinx et al., 2015; Wuthnow, 1991) suggests that context affects volunteering through the prevailing values and beliefs (see Chap. 9 of this Volume). Literature on the topic of social capital confirms the relevance of institutional and cultural factors (Putnam, 1993; Stolle & Rochon, 1999) in terms of “political culture” (Almond & Verba, 1963). Other studies have focused on the importance of the religion as the major contextual force driving volunteering (religious rooting of volunteering). Beyond the positive impact that the religious faith and practice have on volunteering at the individual level, Ruiter and De Graaf (2006) hypothesized that the level of religious devoutness in a country affects the likelihood of individuals volunteering. The non-­ religious people in a religious country would have a higher probability to volunteer than in a secular country, as they would more likely have religious people in their networks. This would increase both the likelihood, for everyone, of being asked to or to hear about volunteering and would also increase the exposure of non-religious people to religious norms of altruism and stewardship. Although this argument has been criticized (Lim & MacGregor, 2012), the level of the national religious devoutness, a higher degree of religious diversity in a society and the belonging to a minority religious group are all associated with an increased likelihood of volunteering (Bennett, 2015). These contributions help us understand that a multiplicity of contextual features, both at the national and at the sub-national level, can affect volunteering. This underlines the need to make situated analyses of volunteering more complex than previously.

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6.2.4  A  djusting the Social Embeddedness Hypothesis to the Complexity of Volunteering Complexity appears not only as a characteristic of the contexts but pertains to volunteering too. While the multifaceted nature of contemporary volunteering is clear to expert practitioners and although comparative analyses have sometimes focused on the types of volunteering to better understand how the context matters (Inglehart, 2003; Salamon & Sokolowski, 2003), so far the internal complexity of volunteering has not been centre stage in research designs inspired by social embeddedness hypothesis. Contemporary volunteering is worldwide more and more plural and internally differentiated, although it may be adequately described by a few common defining elements (see Chap. 2). Beyond the fact that volunteers engage in many varied activities in a multitude of organizations and sectors, literature has documented that diverse forms of voluntary action exist (e.g. organization-based and direct, episodic and continuative, service-oriented and expressive) (Cnaan & Handy, 2005; Hustinx, 2010; Salamon & Sokolowski, 2003); a whole array of infrastructures can promote, design and manage volunteering supply (Haski-Leventhal et  al., 2010); different social segments show different propensities to volunteer (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2000, 2012); people volunteer with diverse motivations (see Chap. 9 of this Volume); and different types of volunteering may generate different types of societal consequences (see Part III of this Volume). How to account for this variety in contemporary societies is an open question. Basically, the complexity of volunteering can be expected to follow the complexity of societies in which it is embedded. The more a society is differentiated, the more volunteering “types” (or “models” or “traditions”) could be supposed to coexist, although one may prevail over time or across space. When a new trend emerges and gets established in a context, this is expected to affect the entire volunteering field both by adding a new tradition in the field and/or by altering some components of an existing one (Guidi, 2021). In conclusion, this revised version of the social embeddedness hypothesis can give scholars and reflexive practitioners further chances to interpret the (growing) heterogeneity of volunteering in relation to the (growing) heterogeneity of contemporary complex societies. Some traits of the context (mainly institutional, cultural and religious) – at different scales and in interplay with the meso- and micro-level features – are supposed to affect some of the most important characteristics of the different “types” (or “models” or “traditions”) of volunteering. This working hypothesis can be used for many purposes: for example, for understanding if religiosity in different areas of Italy boosts or restrains volunteering, in interaction with individual resources, or for estimating the propensity to volunteer through an organization or for discovering whether the social-democratic political culture of different regions in the world shapes the motivation to volunteer.

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6.3  T  he Social Embeddedness of Volunteering in Complex Countries: Dealing with the Italian Case In this Volume a revised version of social embeddedness hypothesis is used to account for volunteering in Italy. Namely, some of the most relevant traits of volunteering (e.g. organized or direct volunteering, activity sector, volunteers’ motivations, correlations of voluntary action with political participation, trust, well-being, etc.) are supposed to depend on the contextual peculiarities of this country in interaction with meso and micro (individual-level) features. The testing of the revised social embeddedness hypothesis in Italy has a peculiar value. The wide, sedimented and systemic domestic heterogeneity of Italy, jointly with a historically weak central State, made this country a “mosaic” composed of different coexistent local contexts. Territorial peculiarities, in interaction with mesoand micro-level features, may be expected to shape different characteristics of Italian volunteering. A structurally analogous situation (i.e. domestic heterogeneity of the context, variety of volunteering) might well describe many other countries in the world. This makes the “Italian test” potentially relevant for other countries and for refining international comparisons. From an international perspective, the domestic heterogeneity of Italy can be examined along two paths. In the first, I critically deal with the most known representations of Italian heterogeneity in social and political sciences, those provided by the US political science literature on (un)civicness. In the second, I use official statistical data about the so-called antecedents of volunteering to give a clearer idea about the Italian territorial differentiations.

6.3.1  The Italian Diversity, as you Probably (Don’t) Know It In the well-known opening pages of his masterpiece, Robert Putnam’s imaginary one-day travel from Seveso (Lombardy Region, Northern Italy) to Pietrapertosa (Basilicata Region, Southern Italy) (about 975 km) is: less impressive for the distance spanned than for the historical contrasts between the point of departure and the destination (Putnam, 1993, p. 4).

While Seveso and its world-famous ecological disaster (1976) represented the late-­ modern “risk society” (Beck, 1992), travelling towards the South of Italy in the same years “was to return centuries into the past”: many people in Pietrapertosa were daily pressed by the absence of running water, as it had been throughout much of Europe three or four centuries earlier (ibid.). Among contemporary social and political scientists, Putnam has likely provided the most influential picture of the Italian regional differences. Putnamian Italy of the 1980s is divided in two areas: the Southern regions, where the legacy of the

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twelfth-century autocratic and centralist regime is still relevant, and the Centre-­ Northern regions, governed by the heritage of a liberal and egalitarian communal republicanism, which ruled the self-governing cities from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. Correspondingly, and despite many changes, in the Centre-North of Italy, the horizontal civic bonds of the remote past have undergirded levels of economic and institutional performance generally much higher than in the South, where social and political relations have been vertically structured (Putnam, 1993, p. 181).

The general lesson Putnam learned from the Italian fragmentation is that generalized reciprocity is a necessary condition for the economic development and the institutional efficiency of an area. Conversely, where norms and networks of civic engagement have been lacking, “the outlook for collective action appears bleak” (Putnam, 1993, p. 183). Well beyond Italy, Putnam states that: the fate of Mezzogiorno [Italian Southern Regions] is an object lesson for the Third World today (ibid.).

Putnam was not the only US scholar to have tackled “the enigma of the Italian diversity” (Sciolla, 1997, p. 27) and to have taken Italy as a model of (un)civicness and its mechanisms. Banfield (1958) pointed to the so-called “amoral familism” as the cause of the civic and economic backwardness of an archetypical village in Southern Italy. The masterpiece of Almond and Verba (1963) identified “parochialism” as a trait of the Italian political culture, and LaPalombara (1964) invited his readers to consider Italy as the international champion of “clientelism”. As a result of these representations, Italy is widely considered as a country divided between the more civic, efficient and developed Centre-North and the uncivic, inefficient and backward South, where the typical national culture of familism, parochialism and clientelism would have its clearest expression. Though influential, these representations of the heterogeneities of Italy have been subject to criticism. The Italian literature has partly confirmed and developed them (e.g. Cartocci, 2007; Tullio-Altan, 1986) and partly expressed doubts about their adequacy. According to the critics, the external representations of Italian (political) culture and the sub-national differences have flattened the real complexities of the country by selecting, emphasizing and generalizing the relevance of some limited traits (Sciolla, 1997, pp. 20–30). Some criticisms are empirical. Against the simple North-South divide, at least since the 1970s, the literature has reported sub-regional differences (e.g. Catanzaro (1979) on the “five Sicilys” and Becattini (1975) on the “four Tuscanys”), relevant territorial patterns different from the institutionally designed regions (Dematteis, 1989) and the internal differences within the Italian Mezzogiorno (Bottazzi, 1990). Moreover, the US studies, although very different in methods, deal with the Italian territories as if they were internally homogeneous, whereas domestic differences were (and still are) multiple and significant (Rokkan, 1964, p. 677; Sciolla, 2004, pp.  35–37). Finally, Putnam’s, Almond and Verba’s, and Banfield’s works have neglected the role of informal reciprocity in Southern Italy (Bagnasco, 2006, pp. 18–19).

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A second strand of criticism is theoretical. Beyond the exaggerated power assigned to the longue durée cultural factors and the lack of consideration of economic and institutional features (Bagnasco, 1999; Pizzorno, 1967; Sciolla, 1997, 2004; Tarrow, 1996), the aforementioned images of Italy appear to be built on a general interpretative model which separates modernity from tradition.2 Similar to the classic theory of modernization (Martinelli, 2005, pp. 28–53), they risk endorsing a “backwardness myth” (Agnew, 2002) and the stereotyped divide between the global North and the global South countries. For their own part, Italian sociologists have emphasized non-conflictual relationships between tradition and modernity. Since the end of World War II, the North-­ Eastern and the Central regions (the so-called Third Italy) have successfully mobilized some “traditional” resources (local identities, family ties, artisan expertise, etc.) to build a development model based on networks of small enterprises, high levels of integration and abundant stocks of social capital (Bagnasco, 1977, 1988; Bagnasco & Oberti, 1998; Trigilia, 1986). In the late 1980s data showed that “familism” and trust in the Catholic Church encouraged various forms of civil ethics and civicness (Sciolla, 1997, p. 56; Sciolla & Negri, 1996, p. 134). Although Putnam, Banfield, Almond and Verba are correct in identifying Italy as a telling case of intra-national varieties and civic divides, they failed to fully recognizing and interpreting the complexity of the country. This complexity is indeed not exceptional. The coexistence of and intertwining between different layers of tradition and modernity appear to be the usual pattern of development. Italy perhaps stands out because in this relatively small and rich Western country, the combinations between different layers of tradition and different layers of modernity appear many, diverse, sedimented and locally based. The significance of local patterns corresponds with the structural weakness of the nation State, which was late in being established, has been contested since its beginning and has been largely ineffective in combating particularism.

6.3.2  Italian Fragmentation and Antecedents of Volunteering A second way to address the domestic fragmentation of Italy and its relevance for volunteering studies comes from the debate on the “antecedents” of volunteering (see also Chap. 10 of this Volume). Although serious theoretical and metholodogical

2  This paradigm also echoes a frequent topic in the Italian public discourse. Although Italy is officially one of the richest countries in the world since the 1960s, its modernity has been actually questioned for a long time. Modernity and modernization have been crucial issues within the long-­ lasting domestic debate about the Southern regions conditions and the North/South relations since the state unification of Italy (1861) (Barbagallo, 2011, 2017). In the last decades the Southern regions of Italy have been often intended as backward, traditional and underdeveloped areas, lagging behind in the economic, social and cultural development of the North and particularly reluctant in following the road towards modernity (Cassano, 2009, pp. 42–50).

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questions render results sometimes contradictory and hard to compare, this debate allows us to identify an inventory of the factors affecting volunteering and the number of hours volunteered in contemporary (Western) societies (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2000, 2012). As detailed below and summarized in Tables 6.1 and 6.2, in Italy nearly all the antecedent factors of volunteering, as considered by research since the mid-1980s, are affected or moderated by the regional differences in the country.3 Beyond the North-South divide (NUTS 1) – a key aspect of the Italian territorial fragmentation  – further territorial differences at NUTS 2+ level are expected to systematically influence several traits of Italian volunteering (e.g. rate of volunteering, hours volunteered, motivations to volunteer), net of individual characteristics. A number of studies (La Valle, 2006; Ferragina, 2012; Biorcio & Vitale, 2016; see also Chap. 7 in this Volume) showed that Northern Italy – namely, North-East – has the best performances in associative participation and volunteering and that the divide with the South remained huge in the 1990s and first 2000s. This divide has been mainly correlated to socio-economic features (e.g. the differences in occupational structure and labour market in La Valle, 2006). However, multi-level methods are required to fully understand the “net effect” of the context on individual voluntary action. The use of multi-level methods in a complexity-driven perspective clarifies, for example, that an important share of geographical variation in the propensity to volunteer is linked to contextual differences in economic (unemployment rate) and social (number of nonprofit organizations) conditions and that most of the north-eastern prevalence in terms of volunteering rates depends on a high intensity involvement in leisure and service organizations (see Chap. 10 in this Volume). 6.3.2.1  Demographic Features Italy’s population is one of the oldest in the world, but the age distribution varies according to the region (NUTS2), province (NUTS3) and municipality (NUTS4) of residence (GIstat, 2011).4 The traditional South/North divide does not account for all of the differences. Ageing indexes are highest in the mountainous areas of the country, especially those along the Apennine ridge (North-South) with peaks (ageing indexes >200) in the Apennine municipalities of Liguria, Tuscany, Emilia-­ Romagna and Molise (Ifel Anci, 2012). Families in Italy are generally small. In the last 20 years, the average number of household members has decreased (2.4 today), unipersonal families have grown (31.6% of the total) and households with numerous members have fallen in number (Istat, 2018a, p.  86). Multinuclear households are becoming rare, and the most 3  The table comes from an analysis of the three most relevant literature reviews in the field (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2000, 2012) which mainly refer to the antecedents of the organized volunteering in global North countries. 4  GIstat (gisportal.istat.it/bt.carto/bt.carto.html) is the geographic informative system of the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat). GIstat data here used are from Istat 2011 Census. At the moment of writing, Istat 2011 Census is the most recent Census available.

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Table 6.1  Socio-demographic and status antecedents of volunteering (according to literature since the mid-1980s onwards) and Italian territorial fragmentation Explanatory features Effect on volunteering Territorial distribution in Italy (independent) (dependent) (offical data) SocioAge Middle age > probability to Variable ageing indexes at NUTS 2+ levels demographic volunteer (Smith, 1994, Wilson, 2012) Middle age > community- Older population in mountain areas, especially along the Apennine ridge oriented volunteering (1200 km North/South) (Wilson, 2000) Old-age > service and recreational volunteering (Wilson, 2000) Gender Male > participation to Women relatively more numerous in associations (Smith, 1994) the older areas of the country. High gender gap in Italy, with a peak in Southern regions where women are largely inactive and suffer the highest asymmetries in family work Female > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) vs. No effect of gender on volunteering (Wilson, 2000) Female > caring person-toperson voluntary activities (Wilson, 2000) Female < leadership voluntary activities (Wilson, 2000) Family Material or affective family Concentration of family deprivation in deprivation < probability to Southern regions. Number of families living in relative poverty in Calabria, volunteer (Wilson, 2012) Campania, Sicily seven/eight times that the richer Northern regions Marriage rates higher in Southern Being married > regions, but relevant differences at probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) vs Province (NUTS 3) level in the Being separated or North divorced > probability to Higher divorce rate in Centrevolunteer (Smith, 1994) Northern regions Big families relatively concentrated Being parent of children in the Southern provinces (NUTS 3) 5-15 y.o. > probability to and in one Northestern region volunteer (Smith, 1994) (Bolzano/Bozen) Being parent of young children < hours volunteered (Wilson, 2000) (continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Explanatory features (independent)

Race

Status

Income

Work

Education

Effect on volunteering (dependent) Small family size (with children) > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) vs.

Territorial distribution in Italy (offical data) Parenthood unequally distributed at province level (NUTS 3): higher in the Southern and in some extreme Northern provinces Number of children under Trentino Alto-Adige (Austrian border) and Campania (the Naples 15/18 in family > region) have the highest share of probability to volunteer 0-19 years old inhabitants (Smith, 1994) Almost 1 family in 3 is unipersonal Being single without in Italy, with peaks in Central and children > hours volunNorth-Western regions teered (Wilson, 2000) White > probability to No significant race differentiation in volunteer (Wilson, 2012) vs. Italy. People not having Italian citizenship and non-native Italians mainly live in Centre-North African-American > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) vs No real effect of race on volunteering (Wilson, 2000) Serious divide North (richer) / South Middle/Middle-high (poorer) of family incomes, but income > probability to internal inequalities also exist. volunteer (Smith, 1994, Lower incomes (but higher Wilson, 2012) perception of economic adeguacy) in small municipalities at national level More income < hours volunteered (Wilson.) vs. More income > hours volunteered (Wilson, 2000) Southern regions have the highest Higher professional concentration of manual workers and positions > probability to the lowest of high professional volunteer (Smith, 1994) positions Part-time positions are mainly Part Time work > feminine and concentrated in probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994, Wilson, 2012) Southern regions. Self-employed workers are Self-employment or flexible work > probability concentrated in the North. to volunteer (Wilson, 2000) Continental South and North-West tie in terms of proportion of vs Government worker > government workers probability to volunteer (Wilson, 2000) Being retired > hours More retired people in the oldest volunteered (Wilson, 2000) regions Higher levels > probability Highest levels in the Central Italy, lowest in the South (NUTS 1), but to (organization-based) some Southern regions (NUTS 2) volunteer (Wilson, 2000, perfom better than the Northern ones. 2012) Wide intra-regional (and intra-cities) differentiation (NUTS 3+)

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Table 6.2  Participation and social context antecedents of volunteering (according to literature since the mid-1980s onwards) and Italian territorial fragmentation Explanatory features Effect on volunteering Territorial distribution in Italy (independent) (dependent) (offical data) Highest rates of religiosity in Participation Religion Church attendance > Southern regions, lowest in the probability to volunteer Northern and Central ones but (Smith, 1994, Wilson, significant exceptions to this 2012) North/South divide (e.g. secularised Sardinia in the South; religious Veneto, Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige in the North) exist In the last years, higher political Politics Political activity > activity in Southern regions probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) Largest helping networks in Large, heterogeneous Social context Individual Centre-Northern medium-small networks > probability to (from meso to Network cities and rural areas, smallest in volunteer (Wilson, 2000, macro) the Southern big urban centres 2012) More friendship activity > People living in the Southern regions spend more time with their probability to volunteer g friends (Smith, 1994) Almost 80% of Italians are home Neighborhood Home-ownership in an owners. Differences at regional area > probability to (NUTS 2), municipal (NUTS 4) volunteer (Wilson, 2012) levels and within cities Higher economic status of Relevant socio-economic area differences in Italian cities with an area > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) vs. suburbs and metropolitan peripheries sometimes better off than historical centres and cores No neighborhood real effect on volunteering (Wilson, 2000) Long-term residence in an Italians are generally long-term residents area > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) Little less than 50% of Italians live Residence Rural and small areas > in areas having an intermediate area probability to volunteer degree of urbanization. Highly (Smith, 1994, Wilson, urbanised municipalities are 2012) extremely clustered (around Milan, Rome and Naples). Small and very small municipalities in NorthWestern area (NUTS 1), bigger in the South, but intra-area (NUTS 2) differences exist. More than 4 municipalities out of 10 in Italy are mountainous (North and South) (continued)

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Table 6.2 (continued) Explanatory features (independent) Social context City/Region (from meso to macro)

Effect on volunteering (dependent) Economic and cultural homogeneity of cities and states > probability to volunteer (Wilson, 2012) vs. cultural heterogeneity in a region > probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) Nonprofit Number of nonprofit sector organizations per capita in a context > probability to volunteer (Wilson, 2012) Welfare system Welfare state expenditures and regime > probability to volunteer (rate and type) (Wilson, 2012)

Territorial distribution in Italy (offical data) The urban centres of CentreNorthern regions (especially Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy) have become the most heterogeneous areas of the country also due to the massive internal migration from South to North since the 1950s Clear divide North/South (NUTS 1) with some virtuos regional exceptions (NUTS 2) in the South Wide Centre-North/South divide in public expenditure for social services and kindergardens. Beyond this, further heterogeneity exists at lower scales (NUTS 3)

common family model is the “modern” couple with children. This profile is more common in the Southern regions, while the Central and the North-Western regions detain the national record for the incidence of single person households. Households with 5 or more members comprise about 5% of Italian families and are more common in the Southern provinces (NUTS 3) as well as in the North-Eastern province of Bolzano (Istat 2011 Census). As a result of differing reproductive strategies, parenthood is not equally distributed in Italy. The share of couples with children varies from 48.6% to 74.0% at province (NUTS 3) level. It is generally higher in the Southern as well as in some of the extreme Northern provinces (Bolzano, Sondrio, Bergamo) and lower in the Centre-North triangle shaped by Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta regions (Istat 2011 Census). Trentino Alto-Adige (at the Austrian border) and Campania (the Naples region) have the highest share of 0–19  years old inhabitants. Due to a historically weak Welfare State (Ferrera, 1996), the late transition to adulthood of youngsters (Eurostat, 2015),5 a high incidence of older members of the population and the Mediterranean culture (Jurado & Naldini, 1996), the family plays an important role in Italy. Italian families have always assumed responsibility for providing in-person care. This has had a huge and long-lasting effect on women, particularly in their relatively low activity in the labour market and limited

5  Many young people in Italy stay in their parents’ home until they are thirty or even more. The share of people 18–34 years old living in their family of origin, however, significantly varies across the regions, from the impressive 70.1% in Apulia (South) to 37.4% in Valle d’Aosta (North) (Istat, 2018a).

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Fig. 6.1  Gender gap for the activity rate, persons aged 15–64 in 2014, by NUTS level 2 region (percentage points difference between the activity rate for men and the activity rate for women). (Source: Eurostat, 2014)

economic independence and professional expectations (Del Boca & Saraceno, 2005). Gender-based roles differentiation is more pronounced in Southern regions. The low level of participation of women in the labour market in this area (NUTS 1) is a European record (see Fig. 6.1). Women in this area also suffer the worst asymmetries in household and family work in Italy (Cappadozzi, 2019). The marriage rate in Italy has fallen in recent decades and the rate of divorce has risen. In 2017 the marriage rate was 3.2 per 1000 inhabitants at the country level, with differences not only by regions (higher in the South, lower in the North) but also within Northern Provinces (NUTS 3) (e.g. 2.2  in Milan vs. 4.1  in Bolzano/

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Bozen). The last value is higher than that of Southern urban centres such as Naples (3.9) and Bari (3.9). The divorce rate (1.6 per 1000 inhabitants in Italy in 2016) is higher in Northern (max 2.4 in Valle d’Aosta) than in Southern regions (min 1.0 in Molise and in Calabria). Italy cannot be considered a multi-racial society, since only recently has it witnessed the immigration of many people into the country. However, it is worth mentioning that people with non-Italian citizenship and non-native people are concentrated in the Centre-Northern regions (11.0% of all residents, against 4.0% in the Southern regions) (ISTAT, 2018a, p. 81). 6.3.2.2  Status Features As in every other contemporary society, economic and cultural resources that affect volunteering are not equally distributed among individuals in Italy. In this country, however, the territory of residence is a significant driver of status differentiation. The average family income in Italy (€ 30,595 in 2016) is spatially differentiated. It is significantly higher in the North than in the South (NUTS 1), with regional (NUTS 2) peaks (North, Bolzano +28% against the national average, Emilia-­ Romagna +15%, Lombardy +12%; South, Sicily −28%, Calabria −24%). Median incomes (I.Stat) show even wider differences. Further spatial inequalities exist. Families living in the small municipalities of Centre-Northern regions have the lowest incomes of this macro-area. Considered the perception of own economic resources and the Gini index,6 the difficult situation of some social groups of the Southern regions – of Sicily and Calabria in particular – emerges more forcefully. People living in the smallest municipalities, at the national level, appear as the most satisfied, although they have lower than average family incomes. Equally impressive is the Italian North/South divide in terms of family deprivation. The share of families living in relative poverty in Calabria in 2017 (35.3%) is almost three times higher than the Italian average (12.3%) and seven/eight times higher than the richer Northern regions. Other Southern regions such as Sicily and Campania present analogous situations. In the Southern regions (NUTS 1) only 29% of households with children are composed by parents who are both employed (against 64% in the North and 58% in the Centre). In 15% of Southern families with children (2% in the North and 4% in the Centre), both parents are unemployed. Family poverty appears more spread in the municipalities below 50,000 inhabitants at the outskirts of the metropolitan areas, especially in the Centre and in the South of Italy. Paid work is supposed to affect volunteering in so far as higher professional positions, part-time work, self-employment or flexible employment and government jobs have been found by several studies as positively correlated to the probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2000, 2012). In Italy, part-time positions are

 The Gini index is the most used statistical measure of economic inequality.

6

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gender biased (mainly feminine) and concentrated in the Southern regions, reaching the maximum in the Calabria region (extreme South) (45.9%) and minimum in Piedmont (extreme North) (22.5%) (Istat, 2018a, p. 306). The territorial distribution of professional positions follows a similar pattern: Southern regions have the highest concentration of manual workers and the lowest incidence of high professional positions (Istat, 2018a, p. 307). While the North is characterized by a wide share of self-employed workers (Istat, 2018b), the continental South has a large proportion of government workers. Wilson (2000) describes a positive correlation between being retired and hours volunteered. As expected, in Italy the proportion of retired people is higher in the regions with the older populations. It implies again a regional unbalance with 2016 retirement rate (retired people x 100 inhabitants) valued 21.6 in the youngest Italian region (Campania) and 31 in the oldest one (Liguria). Education has a positive effect on volunteering (Wilson, 2000, 2012). Although Italy has one of the lowest education attainment levels in Europe (Eurostat, 2019), there is much variation within the country. Lower levels of educational achievement are more common in the Mezzogiorno regions, while the Central regions have education levels higher than those in the North (North-West and North-East). Data at NUTS 2 level show, however, that some Southern regions (e.g. Molise, Abruzzo) perform better than some of the richest in the North (e.g. Bolzano, Valle d’Aosta, Veneto) in terms of percentage of graduated people in the population aged 25–64. Data at municipal level (NUTS 4) (Istat Census 2011) further confirm that the North/South divide is not the only source of territorial differentiation in education in Italy: the municipal clusters with the worst educational performances are located in both the South and the North, and each region has internal variations. 6.3.2.3  Participation Features In addition to the factors described above, frequency of church attendance has a positive effect on volunteering (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2012). Due to its history and also because it hosts the Catholic worldwide capital (Vatican City), Italy is seen as a highly religious (Catholic) country. This long-term legacy matters, but in a very differentiated way according to region. Currently, the levels of religiosity in Italy show a North/South divide but there are exceptions. The analysis of the main religious/secularization indicators (Cartocci, 2011) for the Italian regions in 2017 shows that the less religious regions of Italy are in the North (Valle d’Aosta, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna) and in the Centre (Tuscany), while the most religious are in the South (Basilicata, Calabria, Campania). However Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy and Veneto in the North and Abruzzo and Sardinia in the South (NUTS2 level) diverge from this general pattern, and regional capitals are usually more secularized than the other provinces (NUTS 3) (Cartocci, 2011). Similar to religion, political activity is positively associated to volunteering (Smith, 1994) although the direction of this relation is contended (see Chap. 13 in this Volume). As already mentioned, Italy – especially the Southern area – has been

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taken as an example of political apathy for a long time. Although cross-national comparisons are difficult, the most recent official data about the share of politically active people in Italy (Istat, 2018a, pp. 399–420) confirm the low levels of engagement, but it should not be taken for granted that this is because of the Southern regions. In 2017/2018 people living in Mezzogiorno regions attended to political meetings and public demonstrations more than those resident in the North and the Centre of the country. 6.3.2.4  Contextual Features Some of the research on volunteering has focused on contextual causes of volunteering, from meso to macro contexts. As regards the meso contexts, large and heterogeneous networks (Wilson, 2000, 2012), as well as lively friendship activity (Smith, 1994), would increase the probability to volunteer. According to an Istat (2018c, pp. 151–174) analysis of Italian social networks in 2016, the Italian family helping network is on average composed of 7.3 relatives. Beyond the closest relatives (siblings, grandparents and grandchildren), almost 80% of Italians can count on more remote relatives, friends or neighbours. Friends and neighbours represent helping resources for at least one Italian in two in 2016. Families receive help from their networks mainly for housework, social company, hospitality and paperwork. Networks are however not homogeneous in the country: beyond age, type of family and socio-economic status, place matters. On the one hand, people living in the biggest urban centres of Southern Italy (the so-called “territory of disadvantage” cluster including Naples, Bari and Palermo) have the smallest helping networks, in addition to more serious socio-economic difficulties. More than in other areas, they limit their networks to the family. In contrast, people living in medium-small cities of the Centre-North (the so-called “spread city” territorial cluster) have more extensive social network. Helping networks are also large in the so-called “green heart” of Italy – a wide rural area in Centre-Northern Italy: although families in this area are the smallest in the country, people there can count on informal networks more than the national average. Conversely, people living in the Southern regions spend more time with their friends (Istat, 2018c, pp. 191–196). Different views exist about the dependence of volunteering on the socio-­ economic status of the intra-urban areas, with some contributions observing that a higher economic status of an area is correlated to a higher probability to volunteer (Smith, 1994) and others finding no real effect (Wilson, 2000). Although research about it is scarce and the relevance of this contextual feature is unclear, Istat (2017a, 2017b) data allow to observe that socio-economic differences within Italian cities are significant. In the biggest cities, the poorest areas are often close to the richest ones; historical centres are not always advantaged; city suburbs and rings present sometimes better economic conditions than the core metropolitan city. Home-ownership and long-term residence in the same area positively affect the probability of people volunteering (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2000). A majority of people living in Italy (79.9% in 2017) are home owners, although some regions (NUTS

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2) both in the North and in the South show variations and the percentage of home owners is not the same in sub-regional areas or within the cities. Italians also appear to be long-term residents: in 2011, 80.6% of people have lived in the same home longer than 5 years (ISTAT Census 2011). Stability could encourage volunteering. According to the literature, rural areas and small scale settlements encourage volunteering (Smith, 1994; Wilson, 2012). About three Italians in four live in an urban environment (Istat, 2013). However 43.6% of the population lives in areas having an intermediate degree of urbanization7 and 31.8% in highly urbanized municipalities (Istat, 2017c, p. 71). The latter are significantly concentrated around Milan, Rome and Naples. Italy is still a country of small towns and cities. In 2011, there were 8092 municipalities in the country, and 80% were smaller than 50km2 (Istat, 2013).8 This pattern, however, is not uniform: while North-Western regions (particularly Lombardy and Piedmont) are mainly composed of very small municipalities (surface area less than 10km2), more than half of the most expansive municipalities (250km2+) are located in the South (NUTS 1). Significant differences however exist within the NUTS 1 areas: for example, the average surface area of municipalities in Campania is small (24.8 km2 – similar to Piedmont), while that of the adjacent Basilicata is more than three times as large (76.9 km2). The pattern is similar if we consider the resident population instead of the surface area: only 12 Italian municipalities have more than 250,000 inhabitants and about 70% have less than 5000 inhabitants (Ifel, 2019). The share of small municipalities per population is very high in the North-West (NUTS 1) but relevant also in some Southern regions (e.g. Molise, Abruzzo, Calabria and Sardinia). Significant overlaps exist between small and mountainous municipalities. More than four municipalities out of ten in Italy are mountainous. They are in both the North and in the South. Some Alpine regions in the North  – Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d’Aosta  – are the only ones to have 100% mountainous municipalities, but also some Southern regions have a clear mountainous connotation (e.g. Molise, Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria) (Ifel, 2019). According to Wilson’s (2012) review, the economic and cultural homogeneity of cities and states should increase the probability to volunteer. As mentioned, Italy can be considered as a highly heterogeneous country both in economic and cultural terms. Regions and areas of this country are characterized by peculiar historical traits and have adapted differently to external pressures over the course of time. In addition, massive domestic South to North migrations since the 1950s and the presence of extra-UE immigrants have increased the heterogeneity of Italian cities. The territorial distribution of persons without Italian citizenship (8.5% of Italian population) is highly unbalanced. The basic North/South divide is again the general pattern, with higher density of migrants in the Centre-North. However, as Fig. 6.2 shows, some heterogeneity exists in the Centre-North.

 After Luxembourg, this is the biggest share in Europe (Istat, 2017c, p. 71).  The total number of municipalities has decreased a little after 2011, as a result of administrative mergers. In September 2018, the municipalities were 7954 (Ifel, 2019). 7 8

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Fig. 6.2  Non-Italian citizens per 1000 residents in Italian provinces (NUTS3). Darker the area, higher incidence of strangers. (Source: Istat Census 2011)

Internal migrations in Italy are a long-term phenomenon (Bonifazi & Heins, 2000; Istat, 2018d; Panichella, 2014; Viesti, 2005). After the transfer of two million people from Southern to Northern regions in the period of the “economic miracle” (1950s/1960s) (Panichella, 2014), the Southern diaspora to the North has continued in the last 20 years (1997–2017) with more than 100,000 people per year leaving the South for a Central-Northern destination (Istat, 2018d). Southern regions (Campania and Sicily in particular) have thus lost about one million people, and Northern regions (namely, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna) have gained new inhabitants in the last 20 years (Istat, 2018d). Recent domestic migrants in the North are mainly young, highly motivated in professional terms and with higher educational attainment than the Southern average. This “brain gain” of the Northern regions should be taken in consideration when contrasting the alleged uncivicness of the Italian South in contrast to the civic Centre-North (Panichella, 2014). Areas show higher volunteer rates when nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are more numerous (Wilson, 2012). In 2016, 343,432 NPOs were active in Italy, but their territorial distribution is highly unbalanced (see Fig.  6.3). Here again, the North/South divide emerges although there is further heterogeneity. While North and Centre both have 63 NPOs per 10,000 inhabitants, Southern regions have only

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Fig. 6.3  Nonprofit organizations per 10,000 inhabitants in 2016. (Source: Istat, 2019a).

44. Some Northern provinces (NUTS3) (Trento, Bolzano, Aosta, Gorizia) – having over 100 NPOs each per 10,000 inhabitants  – and some Southern ones (Naples, Agrigento, Caserta) – having no more than 31 – are the extreme poles of the density of NPOs. Sardinia and Basilicata are exceptions in the South. The metropolitan context does not appear particularly favourable: the relative number of NPOs in metropolitan cities is similar to that of the other provinces of the region or lower (Istat, 2019a, p. 5). According to Wilson (2012) and corresponding to social origins theory (Salamon & Anheier, 1998), the welfare expenditure and regime should affect the probability of volunteering as well as what type of volunteering is most popular. Italy exhibits the so-called Southern model of welfare (Ferrera, 1996), characterized by a weak and fragmented social protection system, a universal National Health Service, the

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Fig. 6.4  Municipal expenditure for early childhood services per 0–2  years old residing in the Italian provinces (NUTS 3) in 2015. Darker the area, higher the expenditure. (Source: Map by Openpolis/Con I bambini (openpolis.it) based on Istat data)

low degree of state penetration of the welfare sphere and the particularistic-­ clientelistic form of the welfare services, as well as giving a major role to the family (and of the women therein) when it comes to providing care (Moreno, 2002; Saraceno, 2003; Trifiletti, 1999). Within this general framework, however, the Welfare State in Italy has regional variations (Fargion, 1997). An analysis of the official data (Istat, 2019b, 2018a and demo.istat.it) shows a wide difference in expenditure levels for social services and kindergartens between Centre-North and South. However, further heterogeneity exists due, in part, to the institutional reforms of 2000s, which scaled down the Italian Welfare system (Kazepov, 2010).9 As shown in Fig.  6.4, some municipalities of the richest provinces (NUTS3) of the 9  Several relevant laws (e.g. L.328/2000, L.Cost. 3/2001) entrusted the regions (NUTS 2) with the exclusive legislative competence in the field of social and health policies and the municipalities (NUTS 4) with the entitlement to provide citizens social assistance.

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country (e.g. Treviso, Sondrio, Lecco) allocated less public money in early childhood services than some Southern ones (e.g. Matera, Potenza, Salerno). Intra-regional variability is also relevant: in the Centre/North, the municipalities (NUTS 4) of the regional capitals sometimes allocate more resources than the other municipalities of the region. There is also variability in welfare expenditures within Southern regions. For example, in Campania, Salerno municipality’s expenditure is 7 times higher than in the adjacent Caserta.

6.4  C  omplex Country, Complex Volunteering? A Situated Analysis of the Varieties of Volunteering in Italy Through the Global Statistical Standards Societies today are more complex than those of the past, and the same could be said of volunteering. It is regrettable that studies explicitly addressing the growing complexity of volunteering as linked to the growing societal complexity are scarce. This cannot be because there are no theoretical frameworks or appropriate data. Different authoritative research perspectives in this field have made major contributions to understanding volunteering as a socially embedded phenomenon. Once it is recognized that the influence of context on volunteering is multi-scalar, non-­ deterministic and multifaceted, the social embeddedness hypothesis provides a useful theoretical framework for explaining the heterogeneity of contemporary volunteering, beyond simply describing it. In addition to a well-established theoretical framework, data and indicators accounting for the complexity of our societies do not lack. In recent decades, official statistics (in Italy and other countries) have collected and analysed data at national, regional and sub-regional level (NUTS 1+) on a multitude of social, cultural, economic and institutional aspects, among which many are alleged “antecedents” of volunteering. For a long time, the most serious deficit for a complexity-driven analysis of the varieties of volunteering has been rather traced to the “dependent” side, namely, insufficient data on volunteering. Although official statistics and cross-national survey programmes (ESS, WVS, etc.) have considered volunteering since the 1990s, data have been poor, often unreliable at sub-national level or unstandardized at supra-national level. On the one hand, the scarcity of detailed data on volunteering at the sub-national scale (NUTS 1+) has impeded study of how the peculiarities of local contexts affect the characteristics of volunteering. On the other hand, the lack of standardized data at the international level has limited the adoption of a comparative perspective on the varieties of volunteering. Recent global statistical standards on volunteering, namely, ILO (2011), seem to offer an unprecedented chance to fill this gap, for three reasons at least. First, the ILO Manual includes a core module and some additional tools, which allow an in-­ depth insight into volunteering. Well beyond the conventional single question aimed at calculating rates of volunteering in the countries, ILO (2011) addresses both

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organization-based and direct (or informal) volunteering, different organizational intermediations, hours volunteered, type of activity, motivations, etc. (see Chaps. 2 and 3). Second, the new statistical tools prompted by the ILO (2011) are embedded within national official statistics with three benefits: (1) resulting data acquire the sampling strategies as official surveys which generally are large enough to tackle social complexity and provide reliable data on different scales (NUTS 0, 1, 2 at least); (2) the ILO-based survey is inserted into wider thematic surveys (e.g. Labour Force Survey, Time Use Survey) collecting information of use for studying the correlates of volunteering in complex countries along multiple paths; (3) the resulting data become part of the official statistical system. Third, previous benefits are greatly strengthened by the international validity of the statistical tools: well beyond the simple cross-national comparison between the rates of volunteering, in the future we would be able to compare the different “types” (or “traditions” or “models”) of volunteering between countries and/or regions of the world, and we could understand how societal and volunteering characteristics actually interact with each other in different geographical areas. Italy appears to be a telling case about how to tackle contextual complexity to better understand the varieties of volunteering. It is a good location to explore the potential of the ILO (2011) as an instrument to better account for the varieties of volunteering, because it is capable of reflecting domestic fragmentations. As with many other countries in the world, but in its own peculiar manner, Italy is highly differentiated. Due both to the sedimentation of long-term legacies and recent changes, its domestic heterogeneity is pronounced and largely area-based. This has pushed an authoritative political science literature (Almond & Verba, 1963; Banfield, 1958; Putnam, 1993) to consider Italy as a privileged observatory for a spatialized analysis of (un)civic action. Although the representations of Italy proposed by US scholars have been criticized, the importance of making a context-­ dependent investigation of volunteering is underlined by the highly heterogeneous territorial distribution of nearly all the “antecedents” of volunteering (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2). While the well-known North/South divide is still very relevant, further territorial differentiations exist at regional and sub-regional levels. Following the social embeddedness hypothesis, one can wonder if and how this territorial complexity shapes Italian volunteering. According to the distribution of the antecedent features in Italy, some regions (NUTS 2) could be considered favourable contexts for voluntary engagement, while others seem adverse. Some regions could be more conducive for organization-based volunteering, others for direct (or informal) volunteering. Some regions could be interpreted as propitious places for some types of volunteering (e.g. religious in some Southern regions, secularized in some Centre-Northern ones). However, clear territorial differences about some relevant antecedents (e.g. government spending, socio-economic levels, educational attainments, etc.) exist at lower scales (NUTS 3+). The revised social embeddedness hypothesis, a full set of official data on demographic, social, political, cultural at national and sub-national level and ILO (2011) based data reliable for regions (NUTS 2), jointly with multi-levels analytical strategies, are the most important elements for a full understanding of the varieties of

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volunteering in relation to the varieties of contexts. Once this promise is fulfilled in Italy, scholars with will be able to conduct other cross-country and cross-region analyses giving practitioners a chance to improve their practices, and policy-makers a chance to use evidence-based knowledge.

References Agnew, J. (2002). Place and politics in modern Italy. London: University of Chicago Press. Almond, G., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bagnasco, A. (1977). Tre Italie. La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano. Il Mulino: Bologna. Bagnasco, A. (1988). La costruzione sociale del mercato. Bologna: Il Mulino. Bagnasco, A. (1999). Tracce di comunità. Bologna: Il Mulino. Bagnasco, A. (2006). Ritorno a Montegrano. In E. C. Banfield (Ed.), Le basi morali di una società arretrata (pp. 9–31). Il Mulino: Bologna. Bagnasco, A., & Oberti, M. (1998). Italy: le ‘trompe-l’œil’ of Regions. In P.  Le Galés & C. Lequesne (Eds.), Regions in Europe. London-New York: Routledge. Banfield, E. C. (1958). The moral basis of a backward society. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Barbagallo, F. (2011). Il Mezzogiorno e l’Italia (1861-2011). Studi Storici, 52(2), 337–356. Barbagallo, F. (2017). La questione italiana: Il Nord e il Sud dal 1860 a oggi. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Becattini, G. (1975). La situazione economica della Toscana. Firenze: IRPET. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. New Delhi: Sage. Beck, U. (2007). The cosmopolitan condition. Why methodological nationalism fails. Theory. Culture & Society, 24, 7–8, pp.286–290. Bennett, M. (2015). Religiosity and formal volunteering in global perspective. In L.  Hustinx, J. von Essen, J. Haers, & S. Mels (Eds.), Religion and volunteering. Nonprofit and civil Society Studies (An International Multidisciplinary Series). Cham: Springer. Biorcio, R., & Vitale, T. (2016). Italia Civile. In Associazionismo, politica e democrazia da tangentopoli ad oggi. Roma: Donzelli. Bonifazi, C., & Heins, F. (2000). Long-term trends of internal migration in Italy. International Journal of Population Geography, 6(2), 111–131. Bottazzi, G. (1990). I Sud del Sud. I divari interni al Mezzogiorno e il rovesciamento delle gerarchie spaziali, in Meridiana, 10, 141–181. Brenner, N. (1999). Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies. Theory and Society, 28(1), 39–78. Cappadozzi, T. (Ed.). (2019). I tempi della vita quotidiana. Istat: Roma. Cartocci, R. (2007). Mappe del Tesoro. Atlante del capitale sociale in Italia. Il Mulino: Bologna. Cartocci, R. (2011). Geografia dell'Italia cattolica. Il Mulino: Bologna. Cassano, F. (2009). Tre modi di vedere il Sud. Bologna: Il Mulino. Catanzaro, R. (1979). Le cinque Sicilie: disarticolazione sociale e struttura di classe in un’economia dipendente, in. Rassegna italiana di sociologia, 7, 7–35. Cnaan, R. A., & Handy, F. (2005). Towards understanding episodic volunteering. Vrijwillige Inzet nderzocht, 2(1), 29–35. Dekker, P., & Halman, L. (2003). Volunteering and values: An introduction. In P.  Dekker & L.  Halman (Eds.), The values of volunteering: Cross-cultural perspectives (pp.  1–18). New York: Kluwer Academic. Del Boca, D., & Saraceno, C. (2005). Le donne in Italia tra famiglia e lavoro. Economia e lavoro, XXXIX(1), 125–140.

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Dematteis, G. (1989). Regioni geografiche, articolazione territoriale degli interessi e regioni istituzionali. Stato E Mercato, 27(3), 445–467. Eurostat. (2015). Being young in Europe today. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Eurostat (2019). Educational attainment statistics, Statistics Explained. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-­explained/index.php/Educational_attainment_statistics Fargion, V. (1997). Geografia della cittadinanza sociale in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino. Ferragina, E. (2012). Social Capital in Europe: A comparative regional analysis. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Ferrera, M. (1996). The ‘southern model’ of welfare in social Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 6(14), 17–37. Guidi, R. (2021). Re-Intermediating Voluntary Action. The Path-Dependent Pluralization of Italian Volunteering Field. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, forthcoming. Haski-Leventhal, D., Meijs, L., & Hustinx, L. (2010). The third party model: Enhancing volunteering through governments, and educational institutes. Journal of Social Policy, 39(1), 139–158. Hustinx, L. (2010). Institutionally individualized volunteering: Towards a late modern re-­ construction. Journal of Civil Society, 6(2), 165–179. Hustinx, L., Cnaan, R. A., & Handy, F. (2010). Navigating theories of volunteering: A hybrid map for a complex phenomenon. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 40, 410–434. Hustinx, L., & Lammertyn, F. (2003). Collective and reflexive styles of volunteering: A sociological modernization perspective. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 14(2), 167–187. Hustinx, L., et  al. (2015). A cross-National Examination of the motivation to volunteer. In L. Hustinx, J. von Essen, J. Haers, & S. Mels (Eds.), Religion and volunteering. Nonprofit and civil society studies (an international multidisciplinary series). Cham: Springer. Ifel. (2019). I Comuni italiani. Ifel: Rome. Ifel, Anci. (2012). Comuni montani. Ifel, Anci: Rome. ILO. (2011). Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Genève: International Labor Organization. Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (2003). Modernization and volunteering. In P. Dekker & L. Halman (Eds.), The values of volunteering: Cross-cultural perspectives. New York: Kluwer Academic. Istat. (2013). La superficie dei Comuni, delle Province e delle Regioni italiane, Statistiche report, 19 Febbraio 2013. Istat. (2017a) Audizione del Presidente dell’Istituto nazionale di statistica Giorgio Alleva, GEN 2017. Istat. (2017b). Sicurezza e stato di degrado delle città e delle loro periferie: follow-up, 05 luglio 2017, retrieved on July 23, from https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/202052 Istat. (2017c). Forme, livelli e dinamiche dell'urbanizzazione in Italia. Roma: Istat. Istat. (2018a). Annuario statistico italiano. Roma: Istat. Istat. (2018b). I lavoratori indipendenti, Statistiche focus, 5 Novembre 2018. Istat. (2018c). Rapporto annuale 2018. Roma: Istat. Istat. (2018d). Mobilità interna e migrazioni internazionali della popolazione residente, Statistiche report, 13 Dicembre 2018. Istat. (2019a). Misure del Benessere equo e sostenibile dei territori, 29 maggio 2019. Istat. (2019b). La spesa dei comuni per i servizi sociali, Statistiche report, 3 gennaio 2019. Jurado, G. T., & Naldini, M. (1996). Is the. South so different? Italian and Spanish Families in a Comparative Perspective, in South European Society and Politics, 1996, 1(3), 42–66. Kazepov, Y. (Ed.). (2010). Rescaling social policies: Towards multilevel governance in Europe. Farnham: Ashgate.

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La Valle, D. (2006). La partecipazione alle associazioni in Italia. Tendenze generali e differenze regionali, in Stato e Mercato, 2, 277–306. LaPalombara, J. (1964). Interest groups in Italian politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lemon, M., Palisi, B. J., & Jacobson, P. E. (1972). Dominant statuses and involvement in formal voluntary associations. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 1(2), 30–42. Lim, C., & MacGregor, C.  A. (2012). Religion and volunteering in context: Disentangling the contextual effects of religion on voluntary behavior. American Sociological Review, 77(5), 747–779. Martinelli, A. (2005). Global modernization: Rethinking the project of modernity. London: Sage. Moreno, L. (2002). Mediterranean welfare and ‘superwomen’, in Working Paper 02–02., Unidad de Políticas Comparadas. Panichella, N. (2014). Meridionali al nord. Migrazioni interne e società italiana dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Il Mulino: Bologna. Pizzorno, A. (1967). Familismo amorale e marginalità storica, ovvero perché non c'è niente da fare a Montegrano, in Quaderni di sociologia, 3, pp.349–62. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work. Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press: Princeton. Rokkan, S. (1964). Review of the civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations by Gabriel a. Almond and Sidney Verba, in The American Political Science Review, 58(3), 676–679. Rotolo, T., & Wilson, J. (2012). State-level differences in volunteerism in the United States: Research based on demographic, institutional, and cultural macrolevel theories. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(3), 452–473. Ruiter, S., & De Graaf, N. D. (2006). National context, religiosity, and volunteering: Results from 53 countries. American Sociological Review, 71(2), 191–210. Salamon, L., & Anheier, H. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–248. Salamon, L. M., & Sokolowski, S. W. (2003). Institutional roots of volunteering. Toward a macro-­ structural theory of individual voluntary action. In P. Dekker & L. Halman (Eds.), The values of volunteering: Cross-cultural perspectives. New York: Kluwer Academic. Saraceno, C. (2003). Mutamenti della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino. Schofer, E., & Fourcade-Gourinchas, M. (2001). The structural contexts of civic engagement: Voluntary association membership in comparative perspective. American Sociological Review, 66(6), 806–828. Sciolla, L. (1997). Italiani: stereotipi di casa nostra. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sciolla, L. (2004). La sfida dei valori. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sciolla, L. & Negri N. (1996). L’isolamento dello spirito civico in Negri N., Sciolla L. (a cura di), in Il paese dei paradossi, Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica. Smith, D. H. (1994). Determinants of voluntary association participation and volunteering: A literature review. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 23(3), 243–263. Stolle, D., & Rochon, T. (1999). The myth of American exceptionalism: A three nation comparison of associational membership and social capital. In J. van Deth et al. (Eds.), Social capital and European democracy. London: Routledge. Storper, M. (1997). The regional world: Territorial development in a global economy. New York-­ London: The Guildford Press. Tarrow, S. (1996). Making social science work across space and time: A critical reflection on Robert Putnam’s making democracy work. The American Political Science Review, 90(2), 389–397. Trifiletti, R. (1999). Southern European welfare regimes and the worsening position of women. Journal of European Social Policy, 9(1), 49–64. Trigilia, C. (1986). Grandi partiti e piccole imprese. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tullio-Altan, C. (1986). La nostra Italia. Milano: Feltrinelli.

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UN (2018) Satellite account on non-profit and related institutions and volunteer work, New York, United Nations, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 91, Rev. 1. Viesti, G. (2005). Nuove migrazioni. Il “trasferimento” di forza lavoro giovane e qualificata dal Sud al Nord, in. Il Mulino, 4, 678–688. Wagner, A. (2000). Reframing “social origins” theory: The structural transformation of the public sphere, in. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 29, 541–553. Wilson, J. (2000). Volunteering. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 215–240. Wilson, J. (2012). Volunteerism research: A review essay. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(2), 176–212. Wilson, J., & Musick, M. (1997). Who cares? Toward an integrated theory of volunteer work. American Sociological Review, 62(5), 694–713. Wuthnow, R. (1991). Acts of compassion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 7

Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct Volunteers Tania Cappadozzi and Ksenija Fonović

7.1  Introduction This chapter illustrates the main results derived from the implementation of the module on “Unpaid activities to benefit others” that was included in the 2013 “Aspects of daily life” (ADL) survey. The Italian module, which was based on that recommended in the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO Module), provides a novel data infrastructure to depict the scope and the scale of organization-based and direct voluntary action of Italian citizens, comparable at the international level. Such still photography of volunteering in Italy in 2013 constitutes a firm benchmark on the statistical timeline of the studies on volunteering. With respect to the past (see Chap. 5 for the history of measurement of volunteering in the Italian official statistics), the data determine the volunteering rates  – segmented by demographic characteristics and by territorial determinants for both organization-based and direct volunteering – against an internationally comparable methodological and conceptual infrastructure. The official recognition of volunteering by the international statistics marks a landmark development with respect to the already rich Italian survey, studies, and The data presented in this chapter were previously published in Italian (Cappadozzi & Fonović, 2016). The descriptive analyses of Sects. 7.3.2 and 7.3.3 feature substantial refinements of the original text. Analyses in Sects. 7.2.4 and 7.3.4 are new. The chapter is co-authored by T.  Cappadozzi (Sects. 7.2 and 7.3) and K.  Fonović (Sects. 7.1 and 7.4). T. Cappadozzi () Division for Population Register, Demographic and Living Conditions Statistics, Istat, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] K. Fonović Csv Lazio, Rome, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_7

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social practice tradition. The definition adopted covers a much wider set of activities than what has been traditionally considered to be volunteering in Italy. The traditional conceptual perimeter of volunteering was confined to only regular volunteers in a very specific type of non-governmental, nonprofit, volunteer-only, solidarity-­ oriented organizations (voluntary organizations normed by the Law 266/1991).1 Such a restrictive conceptualization of volunteering significantly influenced both the scholarly tradition and the advocacy arena, which in turn consolidated the public policy framework (pillarized, for the past 30  years, along different third sector typologies) and biased international comparisons. The availability of data on volunteer work, as operationally conceptualized by the ILO Manual, contributed to a general re-focusing of interest on the centrality of individual action for general interest as a vital part of the third sector, regardless of the institutional framework where voluntary action is exercised. This shift of perspective may be observed through the lens of recent major legislative reform. The Third Sector Code (L. 106/16)2 defines a volunteer as “a person who, by her/his own free will, performs activities in favor of the community and of the common good, also through an entity of the third sector…”3 and enlarges the scope of Volunteer Support Centers to the “support of volunteers in all third sector bodies”. This clearly enlarges the perimeter of the conceptualization of voluntary engagement not only to volunteering through different organizational types but also to direct volunteers who give their time outside of an institutional setting. In particular, data on direct volunteering fill an important gap not only in terms of academic interest but also in the policy-making arena. The data corroborate the mission of the country’s volunteering infrastructure and boost the relevance of voluntary action in the public sphere. The new statistics on non-compulsory unpaid help to non-family members and on the activation for causes of general interest outside of, and in parallel to, the activities of the third sector entities have unearthed the phenomenon of direct volunteering, which turns out to be nearly as important in numbers as its organized counterpart. It is in this context that the chapter presents, in parallel, the rates, the characters, the sub-national varieties, and 11 profiles of organization-based and direct volunteering types in Italy, as emerging from the Istat 2013 data. The initial part of the chapter (Sect. 7.2) is dedicated to sharing the general data on volunteering generated by Istat’s first implementation of the ILO Module with the international scientific, statistics, practitioner and policy-makers communities. Data presented include all but one of the core variables recommended by the ILO Module (rates, demographic characteristics, number of hours volunteered, sector of

1  Law 11 August 1991 n. 266, Legge-quadro sul volontariato (Framework Law on Volunteering), published in GU Serie Generale n. 196 del 22-08-1991. 2  Law 16 June 2016 n. 106, Delega al Governo per la riforma del Terzo settore, della impresa sociale e per la disciplina del servizio civile universale, published in GU n. 141 del 18-06-2016. 3  Translated and italicized by the authors.

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 159

engagement). Statistics on the type of volunteering activities (coded by occupational classification) are analyzed separately in Chap. 8 given the novelty of the approach used and significant potential for further development of studies that would draw on an international perspective. This section also reports on two variables added to the core module in the Italian implementation: length of involvement (both for organization-based and direct volunteers) and multiple-membership/ belonging (numbers of volunteers active in more than one organization). Two other additional variables added to the module  – motivations for and consequences of volunteering – are analyzed in depth in Chap. 9, which is dedicated to the subjective meanings of volunteering. The chapter then adds a second dimension to the photograph of the Italian volunteering by presenting the outcomes of a wide explorative analysis (Sect. 7.3.1) which clusters organization-based (Sect. 7.3.2) and direct (Sect. 7.3.3) volunteers. The profiles of volunteer types presented in this chapter demonstrate how these rich data can be used to understand the nuances within the volunteering community, not just for academics but also, and maybe primarily for, those active in the volunteering community. A special focus is presented on the territorial distribution of organization-­based and direct volunteering, by regions and by levels of urbanization, both with regard to the size of the phenomenon (Sect. 7.2.4) and to the profiles of the volunteers (Sect. 7.3.4). Our aim is to make evident the wider societal contextualization of the emerging heterogeneity of volunteering traditions and trends, in open dialogue with Chap. 6, which argues that Italy is a fertile terrain for methodological testing of the statistical standards, precisely for its sub-national variety of forms of modernity. In the Conclusive Remarks (Sect. 7.4) the authors provide some pointers for further exploitation of the data presented in this chapter.

7.2  V  olunteering in Italy: Rates and Characters of Organization-Based and Direct Volunteering 7.2.1  The Number of Volunteers In 2013, approximately one out of eight Italian citizens aged 14 years and over performed voluntary activities during the survey’s 4-week reference period. The total number of volunteers is estimated to be 6.63 million people, corresponding to a total volunteering rate of 12.6% (Table 7.1). This rate represents the sum of people contributing through organization-based activities (about 4.14 million people, 7.9% of the Italian population) and those volunteering directly (about three million people, 5.8% of the population).4 Considering

4  These direct volunteering statistics do not include help given to one’s own relatives, in line with the updated definition of volunteer work issued by ILO in 2013. See Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization, ILO 2013.

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Table 7.1  Volunteering rates by some individual and household characteristics – Year 2013 (in percentage) Total volunteering rate (%) 12.6

Total Gender Male 13.3 Female 11.9 Age class 14–24 10.0 25–34 11.4 35–44 13.7 45–54 15.6 55–64 15.9 65–74 13.1 75 and over 5.9 Highest level of education attained Tertiary (university, doctoral, 22.1 and specialization courses) Upper and post-secondary 15.1 Lower secondary school 10.3 certificate Primary school certificate, no 6.1 educational degree Main status Employed person 14.8 Unemployed person 10.7 Housewife 9.5 Student 12.9 Retired 12.0 Other condition 8.6 Assessment of economic resources Very good 23.4 Adequate 14.6 Scarce 10.7 Absolutely insufficient 9.7

Source: Cappadozzi and Fonović (2016), p. 46

Organizational-based volunteering rate (%) 7.9

Direct volunteering rate (%) 5.8

8.8 7.0

5.7 5.8

7.2 7.1 7.8 9.7 10.5 8.2 3.3

3.5 5.3 7.1 7.0 7.0 5.7 3.2

13.6

10.9

10.0 6.4

6.4 4.6

3.1

3.4

9.1 6.2 5.4 9.5 7.9 5.0

6.9 5.7 4.6 4.3 5.1 4.5

15.0 9.6 6.2 5.5

11.4 6.3 5.2 5.1

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 161

the total of those volunteering, 54.3% of them states to have been active only through groups or organizations, 37.6% was only involved directly, while a small but significant share volunteers in both settings (8.1%, about 538 thousand people). Men appear slightly more active than women, with total volunteering rates of 13.3% and 11.9%, respectively.5 The gap reflects the greater presence of men in organization-based volunteering (8.8% compared to 7%) while there are no significant gender differences among direct volunteering rates. Quite in line with what is known from literature about the propensity to volunteer in Western world advanced democracies, the percentage of volunteers is higher in the middle age group of the population (the rates following an upside down U curve that reaches its highest at a rate of 15.9% among the 55–64 age class), among those in employment (14.8%), and among students (12.9%). It is important to notice that the highest rate of organization-based volunteering (9.5%) is found among students, which is also the population group that is home to the lowest rate of direct volunteering (4.3%). Similarly, volunteering rates increase as household income increases: the highest rates of volunteering (23.4%) are among those who report living in households with “very good” economic resources. Also, a clear link between the volunteering rate and the educational level emerges from these data: 6.1% of those who have completed primary education or who do not have any formal education volunteer, in comparison with 22.1% of those with a university degree – three times as much. The general volunteering rates therefore confirm the image of a typical volunteer as a well-off and well-educated person. Characteristically for Italy, whose population in 2017 represented the “oldest” country in the world after Japan (WHO, 2017), the leading cohort of volunteers is the generation of baby-boomers, which the Italians term the “young elderly”.

7.2.2  The Number of Hours Volunteered A total of 126 million voluntary work hours was carried out in Italy in 2013 during the 4-week reference period to benefit the community and the general interest, representing, on average, 19 hours per month by each volunteer6 (Table 7.2).

5  The chapter follows the framework proposed by the ILO Manual for the presentation of the zero-­ order results (ILO 2011, pp.  49–60), in which the data are disseminated for the main socio-­ demographic structural characteristics of the volunteers. For more in-depth analyses on the interactions between these characteristics and the identification of the antecedents (determinants) of the voluntary commitment, see Chap. 10 of this volume. 6  Since a person may volunteer both for organizations and directly (approximately 8% of volunteers are engaged in both types), the total volunteering hours for this individual add up. The mean number of hours per capita derived from the number of total volunteering hours exceeds the mean number of hours per capita calculated when considering each type of volunteering separately.

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Table 7.2  Volunteering hours during 4 weeks by individual and household characteristics – year 2013 (total amount of hours in thousands and mean hours per capita in hours and fractions of an hour) Organization-based volunteering Mean Total amount of hours per capita hours 77,189 18.6

Direct volunteering Mean Total amount of hours per capita hours 48,806 16.1

18.8 19.2

42,407 34,782

19.0 18.2

21,141 27,664

14.7 17.4

14.9 18.1 14.9 16.7 22.2 26.2 24.7

6,645 7,318 11,661 14,12 18,132 14,809 4,504

14.1 14.9 15.3 16.0 22.5 27.9 22.6

3,2 6,963 8,362 9,571 8,831 7,445 4,433

13.7 19.0 12.1 14.9 16.4 20.2 23.1

19.5

17,584

19.6

10,895

15.1

18.6

33,339

18.2

18,242

15.5

18.1

18,612

17.1

13,39

17.2

21.6

7,654

23.6

6,277

17.6

15.8 19.7 20.7 16.7 25.9 25.2

30,178 6,522 8,167 6,007 23,446 2,869

15.1 18.3 19.2 14.4 28.1 27.2

21,098 5,662 7,212 3,506 9,577 1,751

13.9 17.4 19.8 18.6 17.6 18.2

26.0 18.8 18.1 24.4

1,377 46,217 24,076 4,85

25.0 18.9 17.3 21.1

845 23,383 19,225 5,083

20.3 14.7 16.5 23.6

Total volunteering Mean Total amount of hours per capita hours 1,25,995 19.0

Total Gender Male 63,549 Female 62,446 Age class 14–24 9,845 25–34 14,281 35–44 20,024 45–54 23,691 55–64 26,964 65–74 22,254 75 and over 8,937 Highest level of education attained 28,479 Tertiary (university, doctoral and specialization courses) Upper and 51,581 post-secondary Lower secondary 32,002 school certificate 13,932 Primary school certificate, no educational degree Main status Employed person 51,276 Unemployed person 12,184 Housewife 15,379 Student 9,513 Retired 33,023 Other condition 4,62 Assessment of economic resources Very good 2,222 Adequate 69,6 Scarce 43,301 Absolutely insufficient 9,932

Source: Cappadozzi and Fonović (2016), p. 48–49

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 163

The 4-week reference period data are then used to produce 12-month estimates of volunteer activity. The resulting data show that, annually, volunteers generated a total of 1 billion 474 millions of hours of volunteer time. This estimate is very close to that calculated for the following year (2014) by the Time Use Survey: 1 billion and 579 million hours annually, which corresponds to an economic worth of 12.3 billion Euro7 (Cappadozzi & Monella, 2019). The average intensity of voluntary commitment does not present a specific gender difference (18.8 hours per month for men and 19.2 for women). But, the intensity of the direct volunteering commitment per month is much greater among women (17.4 hours for women and 14.7 hours by men). The greater availability of spare time increases the number of hours volunteered by housewives and retirees (20.7 and 25.9 average hours per month respectively), the latter aligned with the most senior age range (26.2 hours). The trend is exactly the opposite for those in employment, who dedicate less time (15.8 hours per month on average) presumably because they have less free time to do so. With regard to the household income, people who report living in affluent families record high numbers of hours devoted to voluntary activities (26 hours per person on average in 4 weeks). Families with excellent financial resources therefore volunteer at the highest rates and for the most hours on average. On the other hand, volunteers living in families with serious financial difficulties are among those providing the highest hourly contribution (24.4  hours per volunteer on average in 4 weeks).

7.2.3  Macro-typologies of Voluntary Engagement A joint analysis of the volunteering rates and of the quantification of the hours devoted to volunteering (including both organization-based and direct volunteering), among specific groups of volunteers,8 permits us to identify four major groups of subjects that depict the major trends of volunteering in Italy (Fig. 7.1). Group I: The Great Contributors  In the first quarter, top right, the most involved subjects can be seen. This population exceeds the average values both in terms of headcount and in terms of intensity of the commitment. They are numerous and 7  The value is calculated on the basis of the recommendations of the Guide on Valuing Unpaid Household Service Work: following the input approach and the method of replacement of the market cost, i.e., by assigning to the volunteer working time the gross salary of a generic worker UNECE, 2017. 8  In order to analyze jointly the diffusion and the intensity of volunteer work in specific population groups, classified by gender, age class, main status, educational level, and economic resources, the graphic in Fig. 7.1 reports on the x-axis the total volunteering rate, in the y-axis the average number of hours devoted to voluntary activities in the 4-week reference period, and at the intersection of the axis the average value of the two indexes. The two axes divide the plane in four quarters here explained.

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II

Retired

26

Absolutely insufficient economic resources

24

Very good economic resources

65-74

I

75 and over

Primary school certificate, no educational degree

55-64

22

Housewife

20

Unemplyed person

Tertiary

Female

5

Scarce economic resources Lower secondary school certificate

25-34

15

Male

Adequate economic resources Upper and post secondary

18

Volunteer rate

25

Student 45-54

16

Employed person 35-44

14-24

III

12

Mean hours per capita

14

IV

Fig. 7.1  Volunteer rate and average hours per volunteer in the 4-week reference period for selected population groups – Year 2013. (Source: Istat, 2014)

contribute huge quantities of voluntary work. It is a socially homogeneous group: they are university graduates, financially well-off, and past middle age. The Great Contributors can be identified with the generation of the “founding fathers and mothers” of the Italian modern volunteering movement, the cultural élite who (in the 1980s and 1990s) participated in the construction of the modern volunteer movement in Italy and are still leading it. They are the very image of the Italian traditional “social” volunteer that posits the political role of volunteering by uniting service and advocacy dimensions in the welfare and health sectors. Group II: The Selfless Ones  In the II quarter (top left), we find population groups registering low rates of volunteering but a higher than average number of hours. Their social characteristics contrast with Group I volunteers by operating at the margins of the job-market: groups in this quadrant include those over 75 years of age, retirees, housewives, with only primary education or none at all, and with insufficient financial resources. Dominated by women, this group represents the backbone of solidarity that compensates for the deficiencies of the welfare state.

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 165

Group III: The Best of Youth  In the bottom left corner, we find the most feeble group, where volunteering numbers are low both in terms of rate and in terms of intensity. The distinctive characteristics of this group is its youth, as it is composed of very young people and young adults. The low educational levels and the scarcity of financial resources that characterize this group are in direct relationship with the precariousness of their generation. They are significant though, because young volunteers have on their side an exponential function: a potentially long future of civic engagement ahead of them. Group IV: The Emerging Tide  In the bottom right quadrant, we find the last subgroup, characterized by the highest rates of participation but by a relatively small number of hours dedicated to volunteering. This low intensity of engagement is explained by their central position with respect to the job market. They are predominantly men, in the most productive age groups (35–54), employed or students, and well-educated. This group foreshadows the next big wave of the Italian volunteers, which makes it a particularly promising terrain for the identification of developmental trends, in terms of both modalities and fields of voluntary engagement.

7.2.4  T  erritorial Varieties in the Dimensions of Volunteering in Italy 7.2.4.1  Excavating Beneath the Surface of the North–South Cleavage As explained in Chap. 6, Italy is a complex country, and the description of an average phenomenon risks to remain less than perfectly adherent to the different territorial realities that compose it. This is even more true when we talk about volunteering, which is generated from and entangled in a complex web of social bonds at the local level. At a first glance, volunteering rates confirm the North–South cleavage in Italy (Fig. 7.2). The North-East macro-region as a whole records the highest volunteering rate among the 5 macro-regions (16.0%), with the highest rate (21.8%) registered in Trentino-Alto Adige region9 (Table 7.3). The North-Western (13.9%) and the Central (13.4%) macro-regions hold the middle-range rates. The Southern macro-region is characterized by a noticeably lower participation rate (8.6%). In the South, people are half as likely to volunteer than those in the North-East, which confirms the basic differentiation of civic traditions between the Continental and the Mediterranean Europe. Some regions register rates above the 9  The small rich Alpine autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige (Süd Tirol) can by all welfare and civicness parameters be assimilated to the continental Europe regime and is considered to be the cradle of the modern-era Italian volunteering.

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Fig. 7.2  Volunteering rate by region (NUTS 2) – Year 2013. (Source: Cappadozzi and Fonović (2016), p. 44)

average of their geographical macro-region; such is the case of the volunteering rate in Sardinia (13.4%), much higher than the rate of the Islands (10.4%). Conversely, Liguria (in the North-West, the region of Genoa) shows rates lower than the average of its geographical macro-region (10.5% vs 13.9%). This may be due to its demographics: Liguria has the oldest population of all the Italian regions.10 It is to be stressed, moreover, that the almost identical total volunteering rates in the North-West and the Centre rest on an inverse composition: in the North-West only the organization-based volunteering rate (9.3%) exceeds the national average), while in the Centre only the direct volunteering rate (6.7%) surpasses the national average. The fact that Latium (Centre) and Sardinia (Islands) regional-level rates of organization-based and direct volunteering are virtually the same offers a telling example of how regional (NUTS 2) characteristics outclass the macro-regional (NUTS 1) mean values.11 All this evidence conveys the complexity of a territory that cannot be fully comprehended by simplifying the reporting of the data at the level of the traditionally used 5 macro-regions (NUTS 1), although the presence of a North–South gradient in the participation levels remains undeniable. 7.2.4.2  Beyond Regions, Urbanization as Determinant The North–South divide is not the only one acting on the Italian territory. The cleavage that exists between the highly urbanized areas and the rest of the country is also very evident. The metropolitan areas and, in particular, their suburbs are  Old-age index of Liguria is 255.8, with respect to the Italian median value of 173.1 –https://ugeo. urbistat.com/AdminStat/it/it/classifiche/indice-vecchiaia/regioni/italia/380/1 11  Time series data and further study on targeted research questions would be needed to provide an explanation for this, but the influence of religion-based drivers on the high values of direct volunteering is certainly to be taken in consideration. 10

Total volunteering Total amount of hours (in Volunteering thousands) rate (in %) Total 12.6 1,25,995 Type of municipality Metropolitan 13.5 20,313 area – center Metropolitan 14.5 20,623 area – suburbs Up to 2,000 11.7 6,134 inhabitants 2,001–10,000 12.5 29,204 inhabitants 10,001–50,000 11.9 28,943 inhabitants 11.9 20,778 50,001 inhabitants and more Macro-region and region North-West 13.9 41,952  Piedmont 12.1 11,762  Aosta Valley 13.4 319  Lombardy 15.3 27,246  Liguria 10.5 2,625 North-East 16.0 31,353 7.8 8.3 7.4 6.9

9.3 8.6 8.6 10.1 6.3 10.1

17.8 18.8 17.3 19.3

21.4 24.9 21.5 20.6 17.5 19.4

27,708 8,385 244 17,317 1,762 20,240

12,790

16,331

19,120

3,305

13,015

21.2 25.0 25.5 19.8 19.7 19.8

20.5

15.7

18.5

14.4

22.7

9.0

5.6 4.6 5.5 6.1 5.1 7.0

6.0

5.4

5.2

5.2

6.9

14,244 3,377 76 9,929 863 11,113

7,987

12,612

10,084

2,829

7,607

7,686

22.2

6.3

19.6

8.2

19.1

12,627

Direct volunteering Total amount of Mean hours per Volunteering hours (in thousands) capita rate (%) 18.6 5.8 48,806

Organization-based volunteering Total amount of Mean hours (in hours per Volunteering thousands) capita rate (in %) 19.0 7.9 77,189

Table 7.3  Volunteering rates and hours by territorial characteristics – year 2013

(continued)

18.2 18.8 12.4 18.9 11.9 15.7

14.7

16.7

15.7

18.5

17.2

15.5

Mean hours per capita 16.1

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26,077 9,066 1,409 2,930 12,673 17,189 2,512 402 5,421 5,431 1,027 2,396 9,424 5,678 3,747

13.4 14.0 12.2 11.6 13.7 8.6 10.6 9.0 7.9 8.5 10.3 8.9 10.4 9.4 13.4

18.5 19.6 14.5 18.5 18.4 16.4 20.0 15.9 13.8 18.1 19.6 15.6 15.6 13.9 18.9

19.7

10,351

7.9 8.2 8.2 7.3 7.9 5.2 6.2 5.4 5.1 5.4 6.7 4.1 5.9 5.6 6.8

8.4

14,761 5,613 1,082 2,091 5,974 9,691 1,140 289 2,865 3,710 592 1,095 4,790 3,111 1,679

6,502

8,239 2,866

13.6

10.7 9.2

17.4 25.6

12,785 4,163

17.2 15.1

Source: Elaborations on the Ilo Module – Istat, ADL survey

 Trentino-Alto Adige/ Südtirol  Veneto  Friuli-Venezia Giulia   Emilia-­ Romagna Center  Tuscany  Umbria  Marche  Latium South  Abruzzo  Molise  Campania  Apulia  Basilicata  Calabria Islands  Sicily  Sardinia

Organization-based volunteering Total amount of Mean hours (in hours per Volunteering thousands) capita rate (in %) 20.9 15.8 2,632

Total volunteering Total amount of hours (in Volunteering thousands) rate (in %) 21.8 4,054

Table 7.3 (continued)

17.8 20.8 16.6 21.1 15.1 15.2 15.7 19.0 11.3 19.4 17.3 15.3 14.0 12.8 16.8

20.0

18.0 28.8

6.7 6.8 4.7 5.2 7.5 4.1 5.3 4.6 3.5 3.8 4.5 5.6 5.7 5.1 7.3

6.2

7.6 7.0

11,316 3,453 326 839 6,698 7,498 1,371 114 2,557 1,721 435 1,301 4,634 2,567 2,068

3,849

4,546 1,297

Direct volunteering Total amount of Mean hours per Volunteering hours (in thousands) capita rate (%) 18.8 8.0 1,422

16.0 15.5 8.7 11.8 17.9 15.0 22.1 8.9 14.8 12.8 18.9 13.5 14.1 11.6 19.1

16.0

14.0 17.2

Mean hours per capita 20.1

168 T. Cappadozzi and K. Fonović

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characterized by high participation in voluntary activities, with above the average rates for both organization-based and direct volunteering. This presumably results because high population densities generate territories where the need for services is very high, so according to the principle that demand generates supply, all the productive sectors respond to these needs: private, public, and also informal networks and the third sector that mobilize volunteers. The metropolitan suburbs emerge as the liveliest type among the urban categories and express the highest volunteering rates, regardless of the macro-region in which they are located. This results from the combination of demographic factors (working age people and young families moving to peripheries in search of less costly accommodation and less constipated life-styles) and the lack of public services, especially in terms of social support, and educational and cultural facilities. Specific analyses on the territorial distribution of third sector organizations as infrastructures for volunteering engagement are lacking at the moment, but this evidence points in the direction of the “disappearing metropolis” and the polycentric pushes of the “urban sprawl” (Ferrarotti, 2009). 7.2.4.3  Quantity of Time Determined by Territorial Characteristics Analyzing the intensity of the commitment, as expressed in hours of voluntary work, it is again the Northern macro-regions (NUTS 1) that hold the highest figures. Italians in the North-West devote to volunteering on average 21.4 hours during the 4-week reference period, slightly overtaking those in the North-Eastern macro-­ region (19.4 hours). Those in the Center give 18.5 hours, which is very close to the national average. Much lower values of volunteering time are recorded in the South (16.4 hours) and in the Islands (15.6 hours). Digging deeper, the highest average monthly hours are registered in Friuli Venezia Giulia (25.6 hours) and in Piedmont (24.9 hours) regions (NUTS 2). Having already a low volunteering rate, Sicily (13.9 hours) and Campania (13.8 hours) are also the regions with the lowest intensity levels. The territories that are characterized by high direct volunteering rates (reaching the respective regional levels of the organization-based volunteering rates) register also the time intensity of direct commitment that exceeds that of organization-based volunteers. This is the case of Sardinia and Latium regions (respectively +2.2 and +2.8 hours in the 4-week reference period). Even Campania, which has very low participation rates and hourly commitments, nevertheless records an hourly commitment of direct volunteers greater than that of organization-based volunteers (+3.5  hours in the 4-week reference period). But it is Abruzzo (a mountainous region characterized by the presence of small municipalities) that registers the greatest hourly commitment among direct volunteers, who give 6.4 hours more than organization-based volunteers (in the 4-week reference period).

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Finally, with respect to the municipal dimension, results show that the suburbs of metropolitan areas are characterized by a high hourly commitment of organization-­ based volunteers, while small municipalities register the highest amounts of direct volunteering. These territories are characterized by closer personal ties and by a below-than-average presence of third sector organizations; therefore societal needs are more easily met by direct mutual help, generating a greater workload for individuals than in other types of municipalities.

7.2.5  T  he Institutional Setting and the Field in Organization-­Based Volunteer Work According to respondents,12 the largest group of organization-based volunteers is active in organizations in the field of Religion (23.2%), followed by those in the Cultural and Recreational sector (17.4%), the Health sector (16.4%), and the Social Services and Civil Protection sector (14.2%). The share of organization-based volunteers in the Sports sector is 8.9% (increasing to 14% if only men are taken into consideration), while less consistent is the presence of organization-based volunteers in the Environmental sector (3.4%) and in Education and Research (3.1%). With regard to the type of group/organization13 where volunteers perform their activities, 41.3% are active in voluntary organizations, social promotion associations, and nonprofit organizations of social utility (Onlus); 24.3% are active in religious organizations; and 15.8% are active in cultural and sports associations and in other nonprofit organizations (2.9%). People volunteer very little in political parties and in trade unions (3.2%). In total, 87.5% of Italian organization-based volunteers declare that they are active through nonprofit institutions, while very few volunteers report engagement for government units, such as town halls or schools (2.8%) or business entities, including companies or social cooperatives (0.5%). Volunteering in organized but not formally registered groups points to the variety of associations present on the Italian territory; 9.2% of volunteers are activated through movements  Both the field in which the organization-based volunteer work is performed (classified by ICNPO) and the institutional setting are core variables in the ILO Module. However, it must be specified that volunteers are not always adequately informed about the main activity or about the legal-type of the organization. Similarly, individuals often mistake the organizational mission for the main activity. Of consequence, this information is often better detected by the non-profit census data, even if the target population is not exactly the same, in particular regarding informal volunteering groups. 13  The term “organization” includes organizations of public, private, and third sector, identified in the survey by 14 different types generated according to the Italian legislative framework and general understanding. Respondents choose from among the following: voluntary organization/nonprofit/association of social promotion; cultural association; amateur sports association; religious organization; NGO for international cooperation; other nonprofit organization; social enterprise; public administration; committee; movement; trade union or trade association; political party; other informal group; and other. 12

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 171

(peace, student, environmental, feminist, religious, etc.), committees (of citizens, parents, etc.) or other informal groups (parish, parents, community buying group, etc.). This area of Italian volunteering, less structured and on the border between organization-based and direct volunteering, emerges as favorable to women (12.2% of women volunteer in this type of setting compared to only 6.5% of men) and characteristic of small to medium towns (10.6% of people in towns with 2,001–10,000 inhabitants volunteer in this type of setting).

7.2.6  Duration of Voluntary Activity Istat added questions about the number of years of activity for both organization-­ based and direct volunteers to the core ILO Module (Chap. 5). For the great majority of people, organization-based voluntary activity is a consolidated practice repeated in time, allowing the organization to rely on an acquired expertise: 76.9% of organization-based volunteers have been involved in the same activity for 3 or more years; 37.7% for over 10 years. The behavior of direct volunteers is very different: half (48.9%) of direct volunteers have been active for less than 2  years (Fig. 7.3). In both cases, the continuity over time of the voluntary activity is greater among older volunteers – evidently, because they are older. To understand better, it is therefore useful to analyze the age of the new entries, separately for the two types of

Organization-based volunteer work

Direct volunteer work

Mean hours per capita in organized vw

Mean hours per capita in direct vw

40

25.0

35 20.0

30

15.0

hour

%

25 20

10.0

15 10

5.0

5 0.0

0 Less than 1 year

1-2 years

3-4 years

5-9 years

10 years and over

Fig. 7.3  Volunteering rate and mean hours per volunteer in the 4-week reference period by type of volunteering and duration of activity – Year 2013. (Source: Elaborations on ILO Module – Istat, ADL survey)

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volunteering. In organizations, only 11.3% of volunteers have been active for less than a year, in contrast with 35.7% of direct volunteers. The new entries in organization-­based volunteering are younger (60% are under 44), while those who start to engage directly tend to do so in the middle-age classes (64.4% are between 35 and 64). Even the amount of commitment differs by the type of volunteering and the duration of the activity over time. At the beginning of the engagement, organization-­ based volunteers give fewer hours than the direct ones (13.2 vs. 15.1 hours in the 4-week reference period). But, while the time commitment for the organization-­ based volunteers grows steadily with the years of service, the time commitment of direct volunteers is highest at the extremes (among those who have just started and those who have been volunteering directly for more than 10 years).

7.2.7  Multiple Commitments Among organization-based volunteers, 83.8% are active in only one group/organization, while the remaining 16.2% are involved in more than one group/organization. Volunteers active in more than one organization are mostly men (17.3%) and highly educated (22.3% are graduates). Their position on the job market is not determinant: they are just as likely to be employed (17.1%), jobseekers (17%), or retired (17.7%). The trend of cumulating commitments toward different organizations increases with age, up until the retirement age when it reaches its highest (19.1% in the 55–64 age range). This information is crucial to estimating the correct number of total volunteers using the census data, which reports on the number of volunteers declared by nonprofit institutions, which results in a systematic overestimation of the headcount due to the multiple commitment of individuals to organizations.

7.3  Profiles of Volunteers: An Explorative Analysis 7.3.1  Framing and Methodology The traditional understanding of volunteering in Italy is strongly rooted in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and identified with social support activities. A parallel strand of the growth of modern volunteering draws inspiration from the lay mutual-aid organizations convergent with the workers’ movements. But since the emergence of volunteering as a “political” voice in the public sphere in the 1980s and 1990s, sociologists started to decline the term in the plural mode as “volunteerings” (Ardigò, 2001), which mainly refers to the activation in different sectors of activity and to a plurality of objectives. This dominant interpretation presumes that

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 173

the volunteering “movement” is composed of a plurality of “souls” and “currents” that present distinctive characteristics – an understanding confirmed also by most recent studies (Ascoli & Pavolini, 2017). The first statistical profiling of volunteers was done using the data collected in ADL 2003 (Chap. 5), showing mainly the type of beneficiaries of volunteer activity (Istat, 2003). The data though were limited to only a certain type of nonprofit institutions (voluntary organizations). A subsequent study (Rossi & Boccacin, 2006) covered a wider range of third sector organizations, but also focused the analyses on volunteers in voluntary organizations. By applying the sociological perspective on modernization (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003), it proposed three styles of volunteering: collective, reflexive, and relational (Rossi & Boccacin, 2006, p. 21). The scale of this academic survey was small (508 volunteers, 127 voluntary organizations; out of total 2,326 individuals in 588 third sector organizations). The clustering exercise reported in this chapter, which shows the scope of the organizational settings, paired with a very robust sample, is therefore the first of its kind in Italy. The aim of the current study is to corroborate the interpretation of volunteering as expressive of a plurality of lifestyles and approaches, to shed new light on the basic building block of the third sector, namely, the voluntary action of the individuals, and to uncover the nature of direct volunteering. We therefore considered jointly some of the most distinctive features of volunteers, detected through the ILO Module, in order to define the most significant volunteer profiles. To do so, multivariate statistical analysis techniques were used. In particular, a multiple correspondence analysis was used (MCA), which is a typically explorative analysis that doesn’t start from a pre-constituted model but tries to identify the existing links among the detected characteristics. Given the presence of diverse initial information gathered among direct and organization-based volunteers, we chose to focus our work on two sub-populations.14 Our multiple correspondence analysis first required us to identify the “active” and “illustrative” variables available among the data that we would include in order to identify any links that might connect them. The “active variables” used in our analysis of organization-based volunteers are those identified in the survey module: the type of volunteer work,15 the type of unpaid activity performed,16 the number of volunteering hours performed in the 4-week reference period, the type of organization for which the person volunteered, the main field of activity of the organization, the number of years the respondent had been active in the organization, and “multiple-commitments”, the information whether the respondent volunteers also for other organizations.

 Individuals who volunteer both in organizations and directly were included in the analysis devoted to organization-based volunteering, due to the major constraints that the organized activity entails for them. 15  Only organization-based, both organization-based and direct volunteer work. 16  According to the large classification of professions groups, CP2011. 14

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The “active variables” used in our analysis of direct volunteers are those identified in the survey module: the type of unpaid activity performed, the number of volunteering hours performed in the 4-week reference period, and the type of beneficiary of the direct volunteering. The “illustrative variables” for both organization-based and direct volunteers are those related to their demographic and social features, including individual and family characteristics, present in the larger social survey (ADL) of which the module on voluntary activities was a part. The illustrative variables used were gender, age, educational level, employment status, geographic distribution, type of municipality, family economic status, presence of children in the family, age of the youngest child in the family, number of family components, role in the family, frequency of seeing friends, frequency of watching TV, health status, cultural participation,17 IT skills,18 social and religious participation, indicators of satisfaction, and trust. The multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) of these active and illustrative variables provided the basis for the application of the cluster analysis technique (CA)19 that allowed us to single out homogeneous groups of individuals, which express a common set of characteristics that distinguish them from others. The analysis of organization-based volunteers considered four million and 144 thousand volunteers and resulted in the definition of seven profiles of organization-­ based volunteer types that are emblematic of the existing styles of volunteering. The analysis of direct volunteering considered two million 493 thousand volunteers who performed their activities outside any organizational framework and identified four profiles of direct volunteer types.

 The composite indicator measures the proportion of people aged 14 and over who, in the 12 months prior to the interview, performed certain cultural activities out of the total of people aged 14 and over. The activities considered are going to the cinema at least four times; going at least once to a theater, a museum and/or an exhibition, an archaeological site, a monument, or classical or other music concert, opera; reading the newspaper at least three times a week; and having read at least four books. Cultural participation is recorded as zero if none of these indicators have been performed with the threshold frequency; it is recorded as poor if only 1 or 2 activities reach the threshold frequency; it is recorded as average if 3 or 4 activities reach the threshold frequency; it is recorded as high if 5 or more activities are carried out with the indicated threshold frequency. For more information, see ISTAT (2015a). 18  The indicator measures the computer skills of individuals aged 14 and over in four domains of expertise: information skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, and software skills for content manipulation. The abilities of individuals are considered high if they are able to carry out all the activities identified in the four domains, average if they have medium-high competences in at least one of the domains, low if they do not have any competences in at least one of the domains, null if they have no competence or if you have not connected to the Internet in the last 3 months. For more information, see ISTAT (2015b) and Ferrari (2013). 19  The cluster analysis was made with the hierarchical aggregation method of Ward (RECIP). 17

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 175

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Committed Caregivers

Religious Educators

New Recruits

Investors in Culture Male

Sportsmen

Blood Donors

Leaders

Total

Female

Fig. 7.4  Gender composition of profiles of organized volunteers – Year 2013. (Source: Elaborations on ILO Module – Istat, ADL survey)

7.3.2  Profiles of Organization-Based Volunteers Seven large clusters of volunteer types emerge from our cluster analyses of data on volunteers active in organizations. Presented in order of prevalence, these are: • • • • • • •

Committed Caregivers (1,128,000 – 29.6%). Religious Educators (1,036,000 – 25.0%). New Recruits (561,000 – 13.6%). Investors in Culture (427,000 – 10.3%). Sportsmen (368,000 – 8.9%). Blood Donors (333,000 – 8.0%). Leaders (190,000 – 4.6%).

Men outnumber women among organization-based volunteers as a whole: 53.8% are men; 46.2% are women. To deepen our understanding of these volunteer types, the data on each profile are reported by gender as well. The internal gender division of the seven profiles shows parity in some profiles and marked differences in others, as shown in Fig.  7.4. In particular the profiles of Sportsmen, Blood Donors, and Leaders are male-dominant, whereas Religious Educators are mainly women. The remaining profiles (New Recruits and Investors in Culture) are gender balanced. These results signal that even in volunteering, which is generally considered less male-dominated terrain than that of the labor market, Italy is characterized by low gender equality (for a detailed analysis of women volunteers, see Fonović & Cappadozzi, 2018). With this imbalance in mind, we now turn to providing a detailed overview of each profile of organization-based volunteer types.

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7.3.2.1  Committed Caregivers Volunteers belonging to the largest group identified volunteer primarily in organizations active in the Social Support and Civil Protection sector (44.7%) or in the Health sector (27%). They focus their engagement mainly in a single organization (87.6%), most of which are voluntary organizations20 (88.3%). About half of their activities are those of qualified personal care service provided (49%). Other significant activities present in this group are the 6.8% who serve as drivers, which can be interpreted as social transport. The commitment of this group is voluminous and constant: on average, they volunteer almost 5 times a month (4.8) for about 4 hours each time; 18.4% devoted between 20 and 39  hours to volunteering during the 4-week reference period. The majority are active only in a single organizational setting (89.5%) and do not volunteer directly. This group is characterized by volunteers aged 65–74 (17.2%), the retired (27.6%), and those living with a partner but without children (24.9%). They attend religious services (55.4% at least a few times every month) and consider themselves satisfied with their health conditions (72.2%). This profile shows the silhouette of the traditionally conceived benevolent volunteer: elderly, value-driven, solidarity-oriented columns of a world still untouched by the impacts of multiculturalism and economic precariousness. Still the largest and still culturally dominant in the public eye, this group nevertheless accounts for only a third of all volunteers, corroborating the interpretation of volunteering as a plural phenomenon. Also, this apparent homogeneity hides significant internal diversities, which become apparent when we analyze in detail the characteristics of volunteers of the major sector called Social Services and Civil Protection,21 which in Italy are two clearly distinct phenomena, both in terms of organizational culture and with regard to the demographics, and potentially the subjective meanings, of their volunteers. 7.3.2.2  Religious Educators The identity of the second most populous group is clear-cut: one fourth of the Italian volunteers are active in the Religion sector. The specific religion was not defined in the questionnaire, but recent religious diversification notwithstanding, Italian volunteering tradition is still by and large identified with the Catholic Church. The most significant activities these volunteers performed are equivalent to technical professions (55.9%), and they most prominently served as educators and catechists.

 The term includes the three most common types of nonprofit, non-governmental, unregistered organizations: “voluntary organizations” as defined by the Law 266/91, “social promotion associations”, and “Onlus”, nonprofit public benefit associations. 21  ICNPO – International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations (UN, 2003), reference handbook for the statistics on the third sector (Chap. 5). 20

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This illustrates the strong Italian tradition of private Catholic schools and kindergartens and the widely diffused infrastructure of parochial after-school educational services, based on sports and socialization facilities for children and adolescents. The group records a long-term commitment to the organization – 41.9% of volunteers have been active for over 10 years, and 89.5% of volunteers are active in a single organization. This offers a paramount example of fidelization, which exemplifies family traditions and rootedness in a neighborhood dimension. The amount of commitment is average: religious educators volunteer about once a week for 3 hours. This type of volunteering is a lifestyle component of a large and clearly identified segment of the Italian society, characterized by a high level of satisfaction with their lives. It will be interesting to see whether the relative weight of this profile persists or dwindles in the next decade, as it is also quite illustrative of structural gender inequalities (Cappadozzi & Fonović, 2019). Women are predominant in this profile (57.7%). The presence of housewives (17.6%) and students (13.2%) is high. Quite the contrary from the other volunteering profiles, Religious Educators express little interest in politics, and their educational level and cultural participation is average or below average. 7.3.2.3  New Recruits This group is clustered through a double negative connotation; it is characterized more by what it is not than what is. In the first place, 58.7% state that their activity doesn’t fit in any of the ICNPO classifications of the sector of activity. The only sectoral identification that emerges with some clarity is that of activities in support of the environment (16.7%) and the third volunteering profession that emerges is, accordingly, care for the environment and the animals (10%). The other two most represented volunteering professions – unskilled activities (33%) and door-to-door fundraising (12.5%) – are compatible with, although not restricted exclusively to, the environmental sector. The second negative clustering instance occurs with the 31.4% of volunteers in this profile who declare that the association they volunteer with is something different – different from any of the 14 organizational types containing about 30 items proposed by the questionnaire, including informal groups. 12.3% of volunteers in this profile identify their engagement with informal groups, possibly suggesting a refusal to participate in traditional third sector organizations, that may be regarded with suspicion of bureaucratization and dependence on politics and public institutions. Nevertheless, the strongest positive identification of this group is given by their extremely loose identification with the organizations they volunteer for. Volunteers of this profile have been active for a short time (16.3% for less than a year) and commit only a few hours of their time (29.4% give between 2 and 4 hours over the 4-week reference period) with an average commitment of once a week for about three and half hours on average. Among all the profiles described in this chapter, it is the only to feature such short “volunteer careers” and such occasional engagement. The interpretation of the profile as substantially non-affiliated is

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confirmed by the high presence of those who are active in more than one group or association (23.2%) and who volunteer also directly on their own (18.7%). Their direct volunteer work is oriented to people unknown to them before the volunteering activity (4.5%) or to the community and the environment (5.6%). The group is characterized by the presence of students (15.2%) and by a strong lay component (18.5% never attend religious services). Their participation in cultural events is high (30.1% belong to the highest level). Volunteers in this group are great readers (24.2% read 8 or more books in 12 months), have high IT skills (42.4%) and, much more than other profiles, do not watch TV (10.9%). Significantly, this profile does not fit into the standard image of volunteering. It does not express belonging to traditional third sector organizations, and it is characterized by scarce political activation: 26.1% do not perform any activity with political parties or associations. It can therefore be argued that this profile describes an emerging or post-modern form of civic engagement, oriented to the environment and the general interest, guided by the activation for causes benefitting the common good and triggered by a predominantly individual choice. 7.3.2.4  Investors in Culture This group is made of volunteers who perform their activity in organizations involved in recreational and cultural activities. They are predominantly engaged in cultural associations (68.7%) which promote activities both for the general interest, in particular for the preservation of archeological, artistic, and architectural heritage, and with a mutualistic orientation, mainly by organizing cultural activities for members. Their basic vocation is social promotion, by enlarging the spaces and the platforms of access to culture. Volunteers of this profile represent the Italian volunteering élite: 34.8% are graduates (in a country where only 12.3% of the population aged 15 and over have a tertiary level of education,22 while among volunteers the average share of graduates is 21.7%), with family financial resources perceived as adequate (68.3%), and with predictably high cultural attendance (39.1%). Accordingly, their activity is mainly highly specialized (31.2%), although volunteers involved in leadership (10.9%) and secretarial activities also emerge (10.3%). This profile also expresses a high level of trust in local institutions (25% versus 19.4% of all organization-based volunteers). This is indicative of their central position in social networks, confirmed by the fact that almost one third of volunteers engage with more than one association (27.6%). Their commitment is assiduous: 18.5% devote from 10 to 14 hours in the 4-week reference period. On average, they volunteer a little over once a week (5.2 times total in the 4-week reference period) for about 3 hours each time.

22

 Labour Force Survey, 2013 (available at: https://dati.istat.it/index.aspx?queryid=26176).

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7.3.2.5  Sportsmen As volunteers in an amateur sports organization, these volunteers perform mainly technical professions (63.7%), with a strong prevalence of coaching. Their managerial roles (14%) stand out significantly, because the typical volunteer manager of a typical sports-for-all association is a man-for-all-seasons: member of the Board who is also the referee/arbiter who is also the driver and so on. No wonder their commitment is intense: 16.7% devote between 20 and 39 hours in the 4-week reference period; another 17.4% top up with 40 hours or more. On average, they perform their activity 6 times in the 4-weeks reference period for a duration of about 3 hours each time. This is much higher than average and puts this profile of volunteers on the forefront of the volunteer time-investment. Moreover, volunteers in this group are very loyal: a grand 42.4% have been active in the same association for 10 years or more. It is an almost exclusively male group (84.4% are men). Moreover, this group is a world of family men: the majority of volunteers are parents, with a partner and children (50.5%). They are mainly in employment (60.7%) with an above average share of self-employed workers (20.9% of volunteers in the group versus 13.4% of all organization-based volunteers). Lastly, they are mainly lay people: in this group 64.7% of volunteers attend places of worship only occasionally or never during the year (compared to 38.9% for organization-based volunteers as a whole). Volunteering in sports is a modern urban phenomenon linked to the caring duties for children and adolescents, a terrain of gradual conquest also for mothers. The profiling of women volunteers (Fonović & Cappadozzi, 2018; Cappadozzi & Fonović, 2019) has confirmed that the women in this group generally exhibit the same characteristics singled out above for the men. Sportsmen are the most connected among volunteer groups, with high digital literacy and strong social networks. This profile also registers the widest span of economic classes to which volunteers’ families belong, denoting one of few socially mixed and equalizing terrains where families of different social extraction can meet and socialize. 7.3.2.6  Blood Donors This group comprises volunteers active in associations in the Health sector. Their work does not have an equivalent professional code, because there is no paid equivalent: they are mostly blood donors (97%). They volunteer for the same organization 91.1% of the time; it is almost always a volunteer-run grass-roots organization (91.9%). Their hourly commitment in the 4 weeks considered is, obviously, very limited: 65.1% of blood donors devote only 1 hour, and 19.5% devote between 2 and 4 hours. Their engagement is approximately once a month, for an average duration of 1.7 hours. They are mainly men (75.1%), due to particular health requirements, which place much higher barriers for women donors. Blood donation is a

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lifestyle for these donors and an expression of civic morality in Italian society, as blood is donated as an act of solidarity and never sold. The volunteering of Blood Donors is often more than a single act of donation; for many it is complemented by awareness raising activities and by organizing a diffused network of assisted possibilities for citizens to donate blood at work or in parishes. The typical Blood Donor volunteer type is in employment (69.2%), with office employees standing out (52.2%). The most represented age group is that between 45 and 54 years (32.4%). Quite logically, they are very satisfied with their health. They are parents with a partner, with underage children and more than other volunteers work off-site. Their attendance in religious services is scarce (54.5% attends only occasionally or never in the year). The educational attainment of this profile is lower than others (35.1% has a lower secondary and 48.9% an upper and post-secondary certificate). 7.3.2.7  Leaders Originally termed as “Workaholics” or “Stahkhanovs of Representation” (Cappadozzi & Fonović, 2016), this small but very well-defined group clusters activists in organizations dealing with politics, trade union activity, and advocacy. The voluntary profession strongly characterizing this profile is managerial, which is performed by 30.3% of the members of the group, followed by secretarial activities (20.3%). People in this group, much more than in other groups, volunteer in more than one association (26.6%). They devote to volunteering a consistent total amount of hours: 29.3% volunteer for 40 or more hours during the 4-week reference period, volunteering more than two times a week (8.6 times in 4 weeks) and devoting more than 3 hours each time (3.4 hours). Internal governance, heavily bureaucratized management and accounting procedures, fundraising, public representation offices, and networking are all extremely time-consuming activities. In small associations that are exclusively volunteer-based (which represent the vast majority of third sector organizations in Italy), the bulk of these duties falls to the elected leaders. Volunteers in this group are mainly men (61.7%), retired from work (32.3%), or employed in managerial positions (15.6%). They do not attend frequently places of worship (51.7% attend rarely or never), and more than others trust national institutions (19.1% compared to 12.5% of the total of organization-based volunteers). Lastly, they are strong readers of daily newspapers, have high IT skills, and high levels of participation in cultural events. Other than grass-roots level activists, this group shows the easily identifiable portrait of presidents and board members of large third sector organizations and civil society federations who hold offices of third sector representation at the national and regional level.

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7.3.3  Profiles of Direct Volunteers The importance of Istat 2013 data on direct volunteering cannot be overemphasized: it is the first measurement23 of voluntary engagement outside the associational framework in the Italian context. The data allow not merely an accounting of the phenomenon, but, more significantly, induce a reconsideration of the practice of active citizenship and engagement for the general interest that on local level triggers energies and relationships that have long remained below the radar of the third sector representation of interests and of the policy-making. Our first, descriptive, objective is therefore achieved by better understanding who the informal volunteers are and what they do. Together with the rates and the measurement of the voluntary commitment as expressed in hours, the volunteer profiles presented here offer a benchmark for following up on how the phenomenon will change in the future, how this relates to emerging community needs, and how the different grass-roots initiatives respond to these needs over time. The fundamental discriminant to start to understand the direct volunteering universe is to begin to get a handle on understanding the final intended goal of their commitment of time, which we distinguish in two large spheres. The first was codified in the questionnaire as “community and environment” and corresponds to a commitment in favor of the common good and advocacy. The second was codified in the questionnaire as “for others” and corresponds to activities providing services and assistance to people.24 A second, interpretative, objective of the data on direct volunteers was posed by Riccardo Guidi and the authors (Fonović et al., 2018) regarding the differentiation of organizational fields of volunteering (Guidi, 2021) and their embeddedness in different forms of modernity. The analyses presented in this chapter aim to fix the initial cornerstones, for the Italian setting, for further developmental and comparative studies in this direction. Four clusters of volunteers emerged from our analyses of data on direct volunteers. These are: • • • •

Those Who… Lend a Helping Hand (852,000 – 34.2%). Those Ladies Which… One Cannot Do Without (707,000 – 28.4%). Those Who… Choose To Do It On Their Own (688,000 – 27.6%). Those Who… To Donate Go Straight To the Hospital (246,000 – 9.9%).

As with the profiles in organization-based volunteering above, the data here are broken out by gender. In direct volunteering, contrary to what happens in organization-­based volunteering, women outnumber men (52.6% against 47.4%) (Fig. 7.5).

 For details, see Chap. 5.  For detailed discussion on the boundaries between the duty of care within family circles and volunteer work, see Chap. 5.

23 24

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80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Those Who… Lend a Helping Hand

Those Ladies Which… One Cannot Do Without

Those Who… Choose To Do It By Themselves Male

Those Who… To Donate Go Straight To the Hospital

Total

Female

Fig. 7.5  Gender composition of profiles of direct volunteers – Year 2013. (Source: Elaborations on ILO Module – Istat, ADL survey)

7.3.3.1  Those Who… Lend a Helping Hand This is the largest group of direct volunteers. Over a third of those volunteering outside an organization are active in helping people in their own network of friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. It is, therefore, a “short distribution chain” in the activation of geographically and/or emotionally close support networks. These volunteers “lend a helping hand” on direct demand, answering a delimited and temporary need. Their activity, indeed, does not extend much over time: 61.8% of them have been performing it for less than a year. Also, the amount of commitment is rather low: 53.9% spent between 2 and 4 hours on the activity in the 4-week reference period; 37.4% devoted between 4 and 9 hours. The volunteers in this group assisted in dealing with bureaucracy and administrative procedures (11.5%), helped with redecoration, maintenance, and agriculture (7%), and with driving (6.9%). These volunteers provide the resources and the skills needed for activities some persons could not perform independently. Even without information on the characteristics of the beneficiaries, the prominent activities and the type of skills required suggest that direct volunteering targets mainly older people. Volunteers “lending a helping hand” come from families with scarce financial resources (44.3%) and are characterized by low cultural participation and scarce interest in politics. Among all volunteers, this is the group recording the lowest educational levels (only 19% of members of this group has a university degree, versus an average of 22.5% of all direct volunteers). The most significant occupational group is those looking for employment (13.3%).

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7.3.3.2  Those Ladies Which… One Cannot Do Without The other third of direct volunteers is also characterized by their commitment for others, but of a quite a different nature. This group is a predominantly women’s endeavor: 67.5% are women (compared to the general average of 53.7% among direct volunteers). The activities they perform are skilled assistance to people in need (direct observation leads us to presume that the main beneficiary categories are senior citizens, children, people with disabilities), mainly from one’s own circle of friends, neighbors, or acquaintances (77.1%), but also to people unknown to them before the start of the helping relationship (18.9%). This type of help is stable: 34.3% have been in this volunteering relationship for 1–2 years. It is a one-to-one relationship, not an occasional practice. The long-term character of this helping relationship is a distinctive trait of the group: one out of five (20.4%) of direct volunteers has been looking after someone for 5–9 years. This shows that it is a down and out service, complementary to the self-management of the family. The amount of commitment is also considerable: 69.9% of volunteers in this group are committed for at least 10 hours in the 4-week reference period. More than one out of five (20.5%) among volunteers belonging to this group devotes up to 40 and more hours to this service in the 4-week reference period. It is a weekly “driving force” for Italian families; doing without it is probably unthinkable. Given that the strong majority are women, it doesn’t come as a surprise that this type of voluntary activity is often an alternative to paid employment: the unemployed in this group are 59.9%. In particular, there is a significant presence of housewives (18.3%) and of students (9.7%). 7.3.3.3  Those Who… Choose to Do It on Their Own Members of this group have basic characteristics that strongly distinguish them from other direct volunteers: they are employed professionals, are well educated, and exhibit features ascribable to the so-called social core, as theorized in literature (Lemon et al., 1972; Milbrath, 1965) and well described for the Italian organized volunteers (Guidi & Maraviglia, 2016). In fact, their demographic profile shows significant similarities and overlaps with some of the profiles of organization-based volunteers (Cappadozzi & Fonović, 2016; Fonović & Cappadozzi, 2018). And yet, they do not choose to volunteer for organizations. Why? Their motivation may be linked to the inadequacy of third sector organizations to offer adequate and flexible terms of engagement for younger urban generations or to deal with generational differences. This hypothesis though ought to be put to test in a dedicated enquiry, as this set of data does not provide any possibility to test it. Direct volunteers in this profile give their help to the community and the environment (37.6%) or to strangers (25.1%). The voluntary activities most characteristic of this group are at the level of technical professions (32.9%), most typically

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nursing, education, and social work. Highly qualified technical professions are well represented (performed by 19.5% of group members): medical doctors, legal professionals, and teachers. Hence, the group is characterized by a high presence of graduates (35.7%) and by those employed as managers, businesspeople, or freelance professionals (17.3%). A significant share of volunteers in this group are employed in the Public Administration, Education, or Health fields (34.1%). They are, therefore, professionals, serving others or employing their high-skill capacities for the common good. This is a long-lasting volunteering activity. Almost half (42.2%) have been doing the same volunteering activity for over 10 years and 17.5% from 5 to 9 years. The long-term duration  – comparable only to Sportsmen and to Religious Educators among the organization-based volunteer types – means that the voluntary practice is deeply rooted in their life. Having said that, the time devoted is limited: 43.4% give between 2 and 4 hours in the 4 weeks of reference. This represents a clear demarcation line between the direct volunteers in this group and the organization-­based profile of Investors in Culture who show very similar cultural and demographic characteristics, but whose volunteering is much more time-­ intensive. Again, quite in line with evidence emerging on some of the organization-­ based volunteer types, this group is characterized by high levels of cultural participation (26.7%) and by the household economic conditions that are subjectively considered adequate (58.6%). These volunteers, professionals and individual activists, are interested in politics (27.7% inform themselves on an everyday basis) and show a high degree of interpersonal trust (32.5%). 7.3.3.4  Those Who… to Donate Go Straight to the Hospital The last cluster of direct volunteers is strongly characterized by the very short amount of time they give: 83.1% volunteered 1 hour in the 4-week reference period, and 10.1% devoted between 2 and 4 hours. The most characteristic activity (33.9%) does not have an equivalent occupational code, and the reported beneficiary is the community or the environment (28.6%). These characteristics mirror the group of Blood Donors profiled among the organization-based volunteers. But, unlike those who entrust themselves to associations, this group of individuals donates directly at the hospital. Volunteers in this group are mainly in employment (69.9%), in particular as office workers (48.1%) and male (61.8%). Manual workers are over-­ represented in this group (23.8% compared to 12.1% average of all direct volunteers). The structural characteristics of this group are very similar to those of the organization-­based Blood Donors. They are very happy about their health, and their attendance in places of worship is scarce (58.7% attend religious service only sometimes or never). They are parents with a partner, with underage children and very low cultural participation (they do not participate in cultural events nor read books or newspapers).

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North-West Committed Caregivers Religious Educators New Recruits Investors in Culture Sportsmen Blood Donors Leaders Total

North-East

Center

33.9 28.4 31.7 32.3 29.1 31.6

Islands

24.4 21.1

20.9 19.9

34.8 28.2

South

13.0 20.5

26.4

17.9

27.1

12.2

20.9

34.3

7.7 10.1

15.9

21.0

10.0

8.8 4.3 6.6

19.6

21.4

16.2

10.6

26.0

15.9

20.4

8.7

24.7

20.0

15.4

8.3

Fig. 7.6  Organization-based volunteer profiles by macro-regions (NUTS 1) – Year 2013. (Source: Elaborations on ILO Module – Istat, ADL survey)

7.3.4  T  he Diverse Presence of Volunteer Profiles in the Italian Territories The cluster analysis that profiled organization-based and direct volunteers offers some additional interesting insights as to the territorial distribution of these groups in Italy. Regarding the profiles of organization-based volunteers, the territories of the North-West are characterized by the above of average presence of volunteers belonging to the New Recruits and Committed Caregivers profiles, while Religious Educators, Sportsmen, and Leaders are below average in this macro-region (Fig. 7.6).25 These characteristics are compatible with the traditional presence in this macro-region of large – and therefore staffed and well structured – organizations in health and welfare services. The North-East is over-represented in Sportsmen, Investors in Culture, and New Recruits profiles. These represent the emerging trends in the Italian organized volunteering, so this novel finding confirms the role of the North-Eastern macro-region as the pioneer in modernizing the modalities of self-­ organization of citizens. Organization-based Blood Donors are less numerous in the North than in the Centre and in the South. The Central macro-region, approximately identified with the (ex) red belt of the lay highly civic culture, emerges with quite average values, in balance between the North and the South. Just as in the North-West, there are relatively few Leaders. In the Southern macro-region, the most distinct profiles are the Religious Educators and the Leaders. Both are telling of a substantial time-lag evident in the Italian South in the structuring of the modern third sector. Well into the 1990s, the Catholic Church has remained almost the only widespread non-state institution, and 25  Subnational analyses are carried out at NUTS 1 level, as it is not possible to segment them further at regional level (NUTS2): the data relating to the profiles are not reliable for this territorial detail.

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North-West

North-East

Those Who… Lend a Helping Hand

Center

24.6

South

23.1

Islands

21.5

18.8

12.0

Those Ladies Which… One Cannot Do Without

28.0

24.1

23.6

14.3

9.9

Those Who… Choose To Do It By Themselves

26.8

25.7

23.9

14.3

9.3

Those Who… To Donate Go Straight To the Hospital Total

24.1 26.1

19.6 23.8

25.5 23.2

20.3 16.4

10.5 10.5

Fig. 7.7  Direct volunteer profiles by macro-regions (NUTS 1) – Year 2013. (Source: Elaborations on the ILO Module – Istat, ADL survey)

the trade-unions and political activist groups have remained largely non-­ professionalized. Notably, the gender-based separation is most evident in these two profiles and is even more predominant in the South. Religious Educators are mostly women, Leaders – in quasi-managerial positions in voluntary-based nonprofits – are mostly men. In parallel, Sportsmen, indicative of progressive urban environments, are less present in this region. Finally, the Islands macro-region, which is constituted by the two main islands of the Italian territory (Sicily and Sardinia), presents above the national average Religious Educators volunteer types, similarly to the South macro-region, and Blood Donors (confirming the similarity of Sardinia to the Central macro-region). Sadly, despite the richness of archeological and historical heritage sites in the Islands, Investors in Culture volunteer type is decidedly undersized. Regarding the profiles of direct volunteers, the territories of the North-West are characterized by the above average presence of volunteers belonging to the Those Ladies Which… One Cannot Do Without profile, confirming the great attention paid by these territories to personal assistance services, in which both organization-based and direct volunteers are particularly active (Fig. 7.7). The North-Eastern macro-­ region is over-represented by Those Who... Choose To Do It On Their Own volunteers, the direct profile most similar to the organization-based Investors in Culture volunteer type. In the Central macro-region, direct blood donors profile is over-­ represented (which is also true for the organization-based Blood Donors). In the Southern macro-region, Those Who… To Donate Go Straight to the Hospital and Those Who… Lend a Helping Hand are overrepresented. This last profile is also the only one over-represented in the Islands: it features minimal involvement aimed at helping one’s narrow networks in small everyday tasks. These data provide additional evidence of the feebleness of the third sector infrastructure in the South and in the Islands.

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The analysis provides a fairly clear picture of the marked territorial distribution of the organization-based and direct volunteering profiles. The North-West macro-­ region emerges as highly structured around the provision of assistance, not only among organization-based but also among direct volunteers. The North-East, the most “European” of macro-regions, emerges coherently as particularly attentive to the cultural potential of its own territory, confirming the “expressive” functions of volunteering as a form of engagement more typical of advanced inclusive welfare regimes. The South is strongly characterized by proximity networks and traditional community bonds, as testified by great recurrence to sporadic informal aid and engagement aggregated by religious values.

7.4  Conclusive Remarks This Chapter outlines an unprecedented wealth of detailed data on volunteers, their characteristics and activities to have become available for the first time in Italy as a result of the implementation of the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. This includes data reported on the vast amounts of direct volunteering gathered and reported for the first time. We see this contribution as useful to multiple stakeholder groups. Certainly it is useful to researchers that focus on volunteering and the third sector, because such complete information, rendered available in English, completes the contextual analysis and stimulates interest in following suit in different parts of the world. Notably, the novel information on direct volunteers presented here overflows the boundaries of the nonprofit field of academic interest toward the study of social movements, human geography, social economy and social innovation, family and relational sociology, and social psychology. In particular, we hope these data on individuals can rekindle the interest of political scientists in citizens as political beings, creatively active at the outskirts of the boundaries of representative democracy. We hope statistical institutes and national governments will be inspired by the information here presented to – just do it, produce statistics on volunteer work, in big and small countries. They should do it because volunteering is one of the things that makes a country vital and oriented to the future, so it’s worth showing in the data. These data provided the ground for numerous studies and explorations presented in this volume and that will hopefully be used in the future for better comparative studies of volunteering worldwide. In particular, we encourage multi-stakeholder partnerships between statistical institutes, governments, scholars, and volunteering agencies to advocate for and experiment with the use of data on volunteers and their activities within the framework for reporting on the contribution of volunteers to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Most importantly – in the opinion of the authors, who are volunteering professionals and life-long and life-wide volunteers – these data should represent food for thought for all public and third sector agencies vested to promote and support volunteering and active citizenship. In particular, we wish to point out the threats and

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the challenges that these data unsurfaced. First, the voluntary commitment is still a prerogative reserved to the most educated groups of largely urban populations. Second, the vast majority of women volunteers can be identified with care work. Third, large numbers of people choose to volunteer directly rather than through organizations. These three aspects put together, springing from stark disparities in our societies and perhaps also from inadequate priorities of policy investments, make for a quite large terrain of missing potential for the wider societal impact of volunteer-involving associations. In conclusion, we hope that all target groups of our readers will take this chapter not as a neat exercise in social statistics but as a call to action. Acknowledgement  The authors gratefully acknowledge critical comments provided by Megan Haddock to the first draft of the chapter.

References Ardigò, A. (2001). Volontariati e globalizzazione. Dal «privato sociale» ai problemi dell’etica globale, Bologna, EDB. Ascoli, U., & Pavolini, E. (Eds.). (2017). Volontariato e innovazione sociale oggi in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino. Cappadozzi, T., & Fonović, K. (2016). Le dimensioni delle attività volontarie. Caratteri salienti e profili dei volontari. In R. Guidi, K. Fonovic, & T. Cappadozzi (Eds.), Volontari e attività volontarie in Italia. Antecedenti, impatti, esplorazioni (pp. 39–64). Bologna: il Mulino. Cappadozzi, T., & Fonović, K. (2019). Women volunteers in Italy: third presence, between (non) work and family work. In Politiche sociali/ Social policies (Vol. 2, pp. 307–316). il Mulino. Cappadozzi, T., & Monella, M. (2019). Il lavoro non retribuito e il valore della produzione familiare. In T.  Cappadozzi (Ed.), I tempi della vita quotidiana. Lavoro, conciliazione, parità di genere e benessere soggettivo (pp. 13–35). Roma: Temi, Istat. Ferrari, A. (2013). DIGCOMP: A framework for developing and understanding digital competence in Europe, Bruxelles, European Commission, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency. Ferrarotti, F. (2009). Spazio e convivenza. Come nasce la marginalità urbana. Roma: Armando Editore. Fonović, K., & Cappadozzi, T. (2018). Of sugar and spice, but not everything nice. What women volunteers are made of…An exploration of gender specificity of organised volunteering in Italy. Conference Working Papers Series - Volume XI - Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Available at: https://www.istr.org/resource/resmgr/wp18/fonoviccappadozzi_wp2018.pdf Fonović, K., Guidi, R., & Cappadozzi, T. (2018) With or without organisations: Interpretations and findings on individual volunteering in Italy. Conference Working Papers Series- Volume XI  - Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Available at: https://www.istr.org/resource/resmgr/wp18/ fonovicguidicappadozzi_wp201.pdf Guidi, R. (2021). Re-Intermediating Voluntary Action. The Path-Dependent Pluralization of Italian Volunteering Field. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, forthcoming. Guidi, R., & Maraviglia, L. (2016). Civili, conviviali, religiosi, individualisti. Come (non) cambiano i significati del volontariato organizzato in Italia. In R. Guidi, K. Fonovic, & T. Cappadozzi (Eds.), Volontari e attività volontarie in Italia. Antecedenti, impatti, esplorazioni (pp. 65–96). Bologna: il Mulino.

7  Volunteering in Italy: Characteristics and Profiles of Organization-Based and Direct… 189 Hustinx, L., & Lammertyn, F. (2003). Collective and reflexive styles of volunteering: A socio-­ logical modernization perspective. Voluntas, 14(2), 167-187. ILO. (2011), Manual on the measurement of volunteer work. Genève: International Labor Organization. ILO (2013). Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization, Adopted by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (October 2013). Istat. (2003). Le tipologie di volontari in Rapporto annuale. La situazione del Paese nel 2003 (pp. 364–365). Roma. Istat. (2014). Attività gratuite a beneficio di altri. Anno 2013, Roma. Available at: https://www. istat.it/it/files/2014/07/Statistica_report_attivita_gratuite.pdf Istat. (2015a). Il benessere equo e sostenibile in Italia. Roma: Rapporto BES. Istat. (2015b). Cittadini, imprese e ICT, Statistica report, Roma, 21 dicembre. Lemon, M., Palisi, B. J., & Jacobson, P. E. (1972). Dominant statuses and involvement in formal voluntary associations. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 1(2), 30–42. Milbrath, L. W. (1965). Political participation. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Rossi, G., & Boccacin, L. (2006). Le identità del volontariato italiano. Orientamenti valoriali e stili di intervento a confronto. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. UN. (2003). Handbook on non-profit institutions in the system of national accounts. New York: UN. UNECE. (2017). Guide on valuing unpaid household service work. Geneva: United Nations. WHO. (2017). World Health Statistics 2017. Monitoring health for the SDGs sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Chapter 8

Volunteer Work and Its Interrelationship with the Labor Market Tania Cappadozzi, Laura Cialdea, Manuela Michelini, Marco Musella, Giancarlo Ragozini, and Pietro Scalisi

8.1  Introduction Volunteering is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon whose interrelations with the traditional labor market have thus far been minimally explored by scholars. Current research has been limited to the relationship between volunteering and employment conditions as an antecedent of volunteering (Chap. 10), and to the impact of volunteering on employability, as explored in Sect. 8.2.

The analyses illustrated in Sects. 8.3.2, 8.4.1, and 8.6 were originally published by Michelini, M., Musella, M., Scalisi, P., and Ragozini G. (2016) as “Professioni emergenti, competenze trasversali. Interconnessioni tra volontariato e mercato del lavoro”, while the analysis illustrated in Sect. 8.3.1 was originally published by Santelli, F., Ragozini, G. and Musella, M. (2018) as “What volunteers do? A textual analysis of voluntary activities in the Italian context”. The chapter is co-authored by T. Cappadozzi (Sects. 8.1, 8.5, and 8.7), Laura Cialdea (Sect. 8.2), M.  Michelini (Sect. 8.4), M.  Musella (Sect. 8.3.2), G.  Ragozini (Sect. 8.3.1), and P.  Scalisi (Sect. 8.6). T. Cappadozzi () · L. Cialdea · M. Michelini Division for Population Register, Demographic and Living Conditions Statistics, Istat, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] M. Musella Department of Humanities, University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy G. Ragozini Department of Political Science, University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy P. Scalisi Division for Competence Development and Social Responsibility, Istat, Rome, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_8

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The ILO Manual1 introduces a powerful tool for the analysis of the interrelationship between volunteer work and paid work, since for the first time, an international standard defines the activity performed in the context of volunteering. The standard is not based on the type of beneficiaries or collective needs, which the volunteer work satisfies, but it is based on the work proper. Although it is not paid, volunteering requires individuals to expend physical, intellectual, emotional, and psychic energies similar to those required of paid positions; likewise, the work of a volunteer is meant to produce equivalent results (ILO, 2013, Sect. 3.6). Following this assumption, Italy performed its first official social survey asking the respondents to describe their voluntary actions in terms of practical work performed. These responses were then classified through the categories of paid work.2 When first approached with the ILO Manual, many Italian nonprofit organizations showed an initial reluctance and prejudice against being pigeonholed into a statistical standard, for fear of reducing volunteering to merely an economic issue. For many volunteer and nonprofit practitioners, to declare that their activity is “work” would diminish the significance, which constitutes the core values of their service. The initial research question addressed in this chapter concerns the analysis of textual descriptions given by volunteers of their activities. The goal is to understand whether this categorization of volunteer activity as work has found correspondence in the descriptions given by volunteers, by using the text mining technic (Sect. 8.3). Through text mining, one may test the practical labeling of volunteer activities in terms of occupations and the application of this method to the Italian culture of volunteering, which is traditionally adverse to any conceptual connection with the economic sphere. The research shows that it is not only possible to apply the categories of work to the activities carried out by the volunteers but that there is support for volunteer activities to be viewed as an example of job market innovation, where new jobs arise and where people acquire new skills. Thus, volunteering can be thought of as an example of social innovation. After an analysis of the volunteer responses, this chapter describes what the volunteers do, as expressed by the categories of the classification system used for the labor market3 (Sect. 8.4), highlighting the differences between organized and direct

1  Implemented in 2013 in Italy in the annual multipurpose social survey “Aspects of Daily Life”; for details see Chap. 5. 2  The ILO Manual recommends the use of the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08), that is, a four-level hierarchically structured classification that covers all jobs in the world, fully supported by the international community as an accepted standard for international labor statistics (ILO, 2011). 3  The classification used by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) was the Italian Classification of Occupations (CP2011) that fully reflects the ISCO-08 up to three digits. The CP2011, however, is more detailed than the ISCO-08 because it subdivides the international occupational groupings into categories (4 digits) and then into occupational units (5 digits), identifying 800 occupational units, while ISCO-08 classifies jobs into 436 unit groups. For more details, see Gallo and Scalisi (2013).

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volunteers and showing how the Italian territorial variety has an impact also on this topic (Chap. 6). The last part of this chapter analyzes the interrelationships between volunteer work and paid work, both at the macro and micro levels, highlighting the similarities and differences between the activities carried out in these two arenas. The data provides empirical evidence for the link between volunteering and employability, which is treated at a theoretical level in Sect. 8.2 of the source literature (Sect. 8.5). Using the data from another national source,4 the analysis is furthered by exploring the attitudes and skills that are developed through volunteering in organizations, making volunteers important assets as they infuse into the job market. Section 8.6 provides an original analysis that describes the ten major volunteer occupations in terms of skills, values, working styles, and personal characteristics involved. Finally, the conclusion points out that even from an economic standpoint, the values of volunteer activities are significant, summarizing the main results that emerge from this first exploratory analysis of the interrelationships between volunteering and paid work.

8.2  L  iterature Review on the Relationship Between Volunteering, Employment, and Employability There is a complex relationship between volunteer work, paid work, and the professionalizing value of volunteering, or increasing employability for those who volunteer. Although it is relevant to today’s economy and workforce, few studies have explored the topic directly. In particular, there is no specific literature that compares the occupations performed by volunteers with those present in the labor market, simply because before the ILO module, the unpaid activities carried out by volunteers were classified independently from paid occupations. The subsequent paragraph provides a basic review of the existing literature regarding the impact of volunteering on employability.

8.2.1  The Relationship Between Volunteering and Employment While there is large volume of literature that has studied the impact of employment as one of the antecedents of volunteering,5 the studies that have investigated the inverse relationship, specifically the impact of volunteering on employment, are less widespread. For example, several studies show how policy interest in the role of

 Istat survey on occupations.  The literature on social and ecological antecedents of volunteering is extensively illustrated in Chap. 10 of this volume. 4 5

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volunteering as a route to employment emerges when unemployment rates rise (Gay & Hatch, 1983; Gay, 1998). Kamerâde and Paine (2014, p. 264) indicate that the effects of volunteering on employment increase according to the following factors either individually or combined: the motivation for volunteering, the frequency of engagement, demographic factors, the reason for being out of the labor market, and the duration of unemployment. Being motivated to volunteer by a desire to enhance employability improves the chances of that individual’s service leading to gainful employment (Hirst, 2001). It is noted that frequent (weekly) volunteering can hinder the possibility of an individual obtaining a job, while volunteering done just several times a year can have a positive effect (Hirst, 2001; Paine et al., 2013). Regarding the demographic factors of age and gender, some studies state that volunteering has no effect on young people’s re-employment after a period of unemployment; however, volunteering increases an older person’s re-employment chances but only if they volunteer on a monthly basis or several times a year (Strauß, 2008; Paine et al., 2013). The effects of volunteering can also vary by gender (Paine et al., 2013). For example, research conducted in Great Britain affirms that volunteering for an organization during a period of unemployment has a positive effect on re-employment for men, but it has no effect for women (Strauß, 2008). The effects of volunteering as a means toward gainful employment are different for unemployed individuals, compared to people who are undertaking family care or are economically inactive due to long-term sickness or disability (Kamerâde & Paine, 2014). Trickey et al. (1998) find positive effects of voluntary engagement for people unemployed for less than 2 years, but no effect for those who continue without work for more than 2  years. People, who consider volunteering as a way to acquire or update their skills and experience to equip themselves for some sectors of the labor market, could do more targeted job searches and for this reason may spend more time without work. The previously mentioned studies suggest that the effects of volunteering vary according to age, gender, and frequency of voluntary service, indicating that volunteering does not increase the possibility of finding gainful employment for a remarkable part of the population.

8.2.2  Volunteering Improves Employability Despite the difficulty of demonstrating that volunteering has an impact on employment, several studies have addressed the issue of how volunteering improves employability. Hillage and Pollard (1998) defined “employability” as “an individual’s ability to obtain and/or maintain employment; this ability depends on individual factors that influence one’s chances in the labor market”. According to this definition, employability is what an individual can offer to the employer. It represents the supply side of the labor market (McQuaid & Lindsay, 2005).

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Over the years, there has been a proliferation of definitions of employability. In 2015, Williams et al. identified 16 definitions, bringing together the determinants in the following three macro dimensions: individual capital, career management, and context. They summarize employability as a correspondence between individual characteristics and the skills necessary to perform the functions of the job, although this correspondence is not easy to define. In Italy, the most credible definition of employability is provided by the Institute for the Development of Vocational Training for Workers (ISFOL, now INAPP), which states: The intertwining of the human, social and psychological capital of the person -mediated by the situation of variables  -which allows the individual to position himself/herself in the labor market with a personal employment project in adherence to the context. (Grimaldi et al., 2014)6

The literature (Kamerâde & Paine, 2014) supports that volunteering helps with the maintenance and/or development of both soft employment skills and hard employment skills. Soft employment skills include communication and teamwork, routines and time management, discipline, learning to be sensitive and nonjudgmental, and other social or interpersonal skills (Hirst, 2001; Corden & Sainsbury, 2005; Ockenden & Hill, 2009; Newton et  al., 2011; Nichols & Ralston, 2011). Further, hard employment skills include practical abilities, information technology, media and language, business management, and customer relations skills (Hirst, 2001, Cook and Jackson, 2006; Rochester et al., 2009). Several studies analyze the relationship between volunteering and the development of the psychological capital that improves an individual’s psychological preparation for paid work, such as: • Resilience and adaptability, optimism, the propensity to knowledge, openness of thought, and self-efficacy (Krahn et al., 2002; Fugate et al., 2004) • The ability to anticipate situations and optimize one’s actions (Van Der Heijde and Van Der Heijden, 2006) • The characteristics of commitment, trust, motivation, discipline, and self-esteem (Corden & Sainsbury, 2005; Gay, 1998; Hirst, 2001; Newton et al., 2011; Nichols & Ralston, 2011; Ockenden & Hill, 2009; Low et al., 2007; Newton et al., 2011) Finally, positive associations have been found between volunteering and social capital, because volunteering expands the number and quality of social contacts, in particular the number of so-called weak ties (Flap, 2002) which, according to Granovetter (1976), increase an individual’s probability of finding a new job. Also, several researchers support that new networks translate into learning more about job opportunities (Gay, 1998; Wilkinson and Bittman, 2002; Muthuri et  al., 2006). Volunteers may prefer performing a job-enhancing activity since it provides professional skills (Caudron, 1994; Tuffrey, 2003; Peterson, 2004; Low et  al., 2007). However, Paine et  al. (2013) suggest that while volunteering can improve skills, confidence, and self-esteem and can help build the curriculum vitae (CV) and  Translated by the authors.

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contacts, it is unlikely that it will affect the demand side. The discrepancy between supply (skills acquired through volunteering) and demand (lack of skills relevant to difficult-to-occupy jobs) does not automatically translate employability into employment. The skills that people develop throughout their life through work, volunteer activities, leisure, life experiences, self-learning, online learning, noninstitutional courses, etc. must be validated. Such validation helps people to better integrate into the labor market and society. The European initiative on transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications is called the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). It is a tool to help compare national qualification systems and frameworks between those of different countries.7 This tool also provides people with opportunities for validation of their informal learning. The successful implementation of the recommendation on the validation of informal learning invites EU countries to put in place arrangements for validation (Council Recommendation of 20 December 2012/C 398/01) and will contribute to making this right a reality (Cedefop, 2015).

8.2.3  The Replacement Hypothesis Finally, other studies support the replacement hypothesis. Following these studies, volunteer work can serve as a significant alternative to paid work for people who encounter barriers in the labor market. For jobseekers or those struggling to keep their jobs (people with long-term health problems and disabilities, long-term unemployed, people with caregiving responsibilities), volunteering becomes a substitute for paid work by giving volunteers a work-related identity and direction (Baines & Hardill, 2008). Devoting time to volunteering involves organizing one’s time in ways such as getting up, getting dressed, and leaving the house (Newton et  al., 2011; Nichols & Ralston, 2011). In this regard, the General Assembly of the European Volunteer Center (CEV) in 2010 adopted a document in which volunteering is presented as an alternative for all those confronted with unemployment, allowing them to keep their skills active, to develop new ones, to maintain a sense of belonging to the local community, and to create social bonds and networks. In this sense, volunteering increases people’s employability. Social support can serve to ameliorate the destructive consequences of stressful events, such as unemployment (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and by increasing a person’s state of mental health and life satisfaction (McKee-Ryan et al., 2005). The study by Kamerâde and Bennett (2015) adds to the debate about factors of volunteering that mitigate negative effects of unemployment on individuals’ wellbeing and mental health. Their results suggest that volunteer work during 7  The EQF is an eight-level framework based on learning outcomes – what persons know, the skills they have, and what they can do (KSC – knowledge, skills, and competences) – that acts as a translation device between different national qualifications frameworks and qualifications.

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unemployment can have positive effects on well-being and mental health. The positive effects are increased in situations when more generous unemployment benefits come into play.

8.3  The Narratives of Volunteering 8.3.1  The Text Mining Approach to Profiling Volunteer Activity The text mining approach is an effective technique for examining the content of volunteer service in order to interpret such action as work or occupation and to be able to investigate aspects linked to the narratives that the subjects render regarding their contribution in the sphere of volunteering. It was decided to use the textual analysis of the information contained in the written descriptions of the main activities performed by direct and organization-based volunteers. The results yielded 4254 texts to be analyzed. An explorative approach to the text mining type has been chosen (Weiss et al., 2005). After the preliminary transformations,8 the overall corpus shows a high degree of heterogeneity, with a resulting 1649 different words. In particular, the authors chose to focus the analysis on the most frequently used words that profile and describe volunteer activities, ending up with a vocabulary consisting of 175 words. The most frequently utilized words are organizz (to organize/organization) that appears 296 times, assistent (assistant) with 225 occurrences, attiv (activity) occurring 215 times, then assoc (association), aiut (help), and volontar (volunteer and derived words). These terms can be considered generic, and can be related to several aspects inside the volunteers’ community, without additional profiling data. They are followed by terms describing specific fields of intervention: sport, fond (fund), event, bambin (children), and anzian (elderly). Further, some of the words have just one specific meaning and can be considered bigrams (Collins, 1996). Examples of these bigrams include the following: croce rossa (red cross), croce verde (green cross), croce bianca (white cross), protezione civile (civil protection/defense), vigili fuoco (firefighters), and capo scout (scout leader). In the rest of the analysis, the authors directly consider the bigrams obtained by merging the two words into one token. By applying the semantic network and the community detection algorithms to the data, seven groups/communities are noted. Figure  8.1 plots the semantic 8  In a first step, we perform a preliminary transformation of the original lexical data by removing punctuation and stop words and by deleting all the derivational and inflectional suffixes. Therefore, all the words that evolved from the same root will be considered to be the same. For this task, we use the software R. After the preliminary analysis, in order to discover groups of activities that can be described as jobs, we apply a semantic network analysis, and in order to profile voluntary jobs with respect to sociodemographic dimensions, we use correspondence analysis on generalized aggregated lexical tables. For further technical details on the analysis, see Santelli et al. (2018).

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Fig. 8.1  Categories of occupations identified by the semantic network algorithm (a). (Source: Santelli et  al., 2018). (a) Different colors are used for different communities identified by FastGreedy algorithm. Size of words and width of the edges are proportional to the weights

network along with the communities, sets of words that are used together in the narrative, in which words are colored according to the community. It is possible to identify seven categories of jobs related to: 1. The care of people, with special attention to the elderly and the hospitalized – characterized by the use of words such as ospedal, malat, assistenz, ascolt, accud, cur, and sostegn (orange) 2. The education and animation of children in religious (Catholic) settings – characterized by the use of words such as insegn, parrocc, scuol, orator, cateches, and anim (purple) 3. The collection, delivery, and distribution of food and clothing to the poor – characterized by the use of words such as cibo, vestiar, caritas, raccolt, aliment, mens, and pover (green)

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4. The executive leadership of organizations and cultural events – characterized by the use of words such as organizz, event, cultural, membr, consigl, dirigent, and reunion (blue) 5. Musicians – characterized by the use of words such as suon, band, and musical (black) 6. Civil protection – characterized by the use of words such as vigilefuoc, protezione civil, territor, croceross, soccors, and ambul (red) 7. Coaching in sports – characterized by the use of words such as squadr, allen, calc, pallavol (brown) Considering the other sociodemographic variables associated with the respondents, and hence with the descriptions of their voluntary activities, the authors performed the lexical correspondence analysis. This method allows an analysis of how the characteristics of survey participants are associated with different words/forms of work. The analysis clearly reveals a gender gap. Men are generally involved in sports activities, they play music in bands, they are drivers (mainly of ambulances), and they are involved in administration tasks. Women are more involved in providing services to individuals, caregiving activities, and in dispensing food and clothing to the poor. Geographic differences come up as well. Volunteers from the northeast and northwest regions of Italy describe their activities as manutenzion (maintenance), dirigent (manager), addett (functional responsibility), and consigl (board member), often showing voluntary association with more formalized organizations. The actions mentioned in the south and the islands are more related to a female style of volunteering, with a predisposition for the religious ministry and mainly aimed to assisting others. Finally, the educational level and age of an individual have an important impact. When taking the lowest level of education, crossed with age information, a profile emerges of a group of older and less educated volunteers tending toward involvement in religious volunteering. The people with the highest levels of education tend to carry out mainly administrative tasks.

8.3.2  Volunteering as a Driver for New Occupations This textual analysis not only shows that volunteers can describe their activity as an occupation without problem but also supports the concept of volunteer activities leading to job market innovation, where new jobs arise and where people acquire new skills. In fact, volunteering can be thought of as a “social innovation” factor for its capacity to act as a driver for new occupations. The Italian nonprofit sector has offered, in recent decades, a significant and relevant contribution to the structuring of the welfare system. This is an evolution that has also crossed the world of social occupations, generating new professional skills but also new professional figures. The consolidation of the figure of the social

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worker, with the establishment of the Order of Social Workers in the early 1990s, marks the definitive transition into a professional category that has received great impetus and diffusion from volunteer service in the field of welfare. Even for professional figures in education and community/recreation operators, it is clear that society is experiencing a phenomenon of innovation in the field of social occupations that has even more obviously taken inspiration from volunteering. Observing the jobs identified through textual analysis, there seem to be three macro areas of new occupations that draw their lifeblood from volunteering (Musella et al., 2015). First, consider the area of first contact operators. Post-Fordism and the fragmentation of needs have required ever greater attention to the person in his/her specificity, and, consequently, the limitation of the standardization of services has become increasingly evident. No longer are institutions and subsidies the only instruments of social policies, but attention to the different physiognomies with which the social need is manifested. From this emerges the need for social workers skilled in first contact, listening, welcoming, first accompaniment, orientation. These were first volunteers, in experimental projects. Subsequently these figures have found new professional categorization also on the paid labor market. A second area is related to operators of socio-educational centers involved in recreation and socialization activities for children, the youth, and the elderly. With the urbanization and the fragmentation of the traditional family, the urgency to employ new forms of safe and guarded socialization and care spaces with an educational dimension has grown. Consequently, the need for professionals able to accompany growth and personal well-being through broad-spectrum educational practices has also grown. Finally, we find an area related to the management and administrative figures of various levels. There is a need to find resources, to organize production processes of intangible assets in organizations that are poorly structured and not subject to market logic. Further, the task of reporting on initiatives, activities, and projects has increased the urgency of those in charge of management, fundraising, and coordination of groups with different levels of competence. These tasks are merged with leadership and governance roles. Volunteering has and continues to contribute to both the consolidation and redefinition of the more traditional social occupations. It also supports the continuous innovation of professional profiles and social work methods. Therefore, the standard proposed by ILO, relating to the description of volunteer activities as work, not only appears adequate but does justice to this particular feature of volunteering as a driving force both of new occupations and continuous innovation for the traditional labor market.

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8.4  What Do the Volunteers Do? 8.4.1  Occupational Characteristics of Volunteer Activities The use of the same classification system developed for the labor market occupations shows that about 6% of the volunteers carry out an activity that does not correspond to any paid activity (Table 8.1). Of these, 5% are blood donors, while only 1.3% carry out unclassifiable activities.9 Together with the considerations presented in the previous paragraph, this result fully confirms the adequacy of using the same classification system developed for paid occupations, as well as for volunteers. In Italy, the official classification system used by Istat is a five-level hierarchically structured framework known as CP2011. This system allows all the existing jobs to be classified into 800 occupational units.10 This structure allows for identifying and recognizing the professional value of volunteer work, by matching every volunteer activity with the corresponding profile in a well-known and widely used occupational framework, usually applied to paid work. The Italian official classification system divides the occupations according to a hierarchical order based on the concept of competence. Competence is defined as the ability to perform the tasks of a given occupation and can be subdivided into its dual dimension of the level of complexity required to perform work tasks and the field in which they are carried out.11 Istat is particularly useful to understand skills acquired by volunteers through their unpaid activities (Sect. 8.6). Overall, the CP2011 first-level classification includes nine main groups, sorted by the required competence level.12 Therefore, volunteer occupations are classified starting with the first major group, management, which includes volunteers with particularly high skills required to plan, direct, coordinate, and evaluate the overall activities of organizations. Competence levels span based on job skills to the eighth major group, elementary occupations, which includes volunteers involved in performing simple and routine tasks which may require the use of handheld tools and considerable physical effort (Table 8.1).

9  This small percentage of unclassifiable volunteer activities, not being occupations, has not been considered in the remaining part of the chapter that focuses on the description of the jobs performed by volunteers. 10  Such groups form the most detailed level of the classification structure and are aggregated into 511 categories, 129 minor groups, 37 sub-major groups, and 9 major groups, based on their similarity in terms of skill level and skill specialization required for the job. This system is fully comparable with ISCO-08 up to three digits. 11  For further details on the logic and criteria of the classification of occupations, see Gallo and Scalisi (2013). 12  With the exception of the armed forces occupations, as it represents a singled-out and detached activity – this group is not included in this analysis because this kind of occupation is not present among volunteers.

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Table 8.1  Main Italian distinctive volunteer work activities classified through CP2011 (ISCO-08) and the distribution of the major groups of occupations among volunteers (in percentage)

Distinctive volunteer activities Direct or be part of the management board of a nonprofit organization, an association, a trade union, or similar organizations Provide professional medical care Social work and counseling professionals Teaching professionals Provide legal services or dispute resolution services Take part as a professional athlete in a sporting event or participate as professional artist in a recreational event for public entertainment whose main purpose was to serve a public cause Provide emergency medical care as associate professionals Community organizer as religious associate professionals Assistant accounting, bookkeeper Counselors, dispute resolution facilitators, and providers of emotional support to others Mentoring Coach, referee, judge; supervise a sports team Dealing with administrative issues for others Provide clerical services, as archive or copy services Healthcare and personal care assistants Providing companionship to elderly of other families Maintain order in the community or at an event Search and rescue workers Cooking, serving meals Canvassing, or contacting people to advance a cause, by going door-to-door or using the telephone Assisting in educational programs and assisting in teaching or training others to acquire new skills Babysitting and childcare as help to others Support and help the elderly or people with disability in their home

Major group CP2011 – (ISCO-08) 1 – (1)

Description CP2011 Managers

2 – (2)

Professionals

3 – (3)

Technicians and associate professionals

27.4

4 – (4)

Clerical support workers

6.1

5 – (5)

Service and sales workers 33.8

% 4.7

7.8

(continued)

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Table 8.1 (continued)

Distinctive volunteer activities Make improvements to the public green areas Specialized agricultural activities (harvesting, pruning, etc.) Construction, renovation, and repairs of dwellings, historical sites, buildings, and other structures Tailoring work for a charity sale Driving, providing transportation to people, or transporting goods Domestic helping, cleaning, laundering, housekeeping services for others Clean up after an event, collect waste in the woods, on the beaches, etc. Fundraising, by collecting money in the street (tin shakers) Blood donors

Major group CP2011 – (ISCO-08) 6 – (6 and 7)

7 – (8)

Description CP2011 Craft and related trade workers, skilled agricultural, forestry, and fishery workers

8 – (9)

Plant and machine operators and assemblers Elementary occupations

–

Not classified activities

% 2.6

2.6 14.9

6.0

Source: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life Survey

Volunteer

Male

Female

Average monthly hours 30

45 40

25

21.7

20.4

30

19.1

21.4 19.5

18.1

25

%

15

20

10

15 10

5

5 0

20

17.4

hours

24.6

35

33.8

27.4

14.9

7.8

6.1

4.7

2.6

2.6

Services workers 5

Technicians 3

Elementary occupations 8

Professionals 2

Clerks 4

Managers 1

Craft and related trades workers 6

Machine operators 7

0

Fig. 8.2  Volunteers aged 15 and over by type of occupation, gender, and average monthly hours – year 2013. (Source: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life Survey)

The relative majority of volunteers (33.8%) carry out activities classified into the fifth major group, service and sales workers (Fig. 8.2). Service and sales volunteers usually act as healthcare workers, cooks, and other food service employees. These activities are mostly performed by direct volunteers (46.3%). Nevertheless, this group also includes Red Cross, firefighting, and civil protection volunteers and reaches 25.8% of organization-based volunteers. Volunteers belonging to this group

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are mainly women (41.9%), people with low educational level (45.1% among people with at most a primary school certificate), and not employed (37.5%). These activities are more prevalent in the extreme age classes; workers are generally among the younger (47.7% among volunteers aged 15–24) and the older (40.3% among volunteers aged 75 and over) individuals in society. A good portion (27.4%) of volunteers are classified into the third major group, technicians and associate professionals. The volunteers matching this description carry out a variety of activities. A significant part (19.0%) is played by volunteers in churches and parishes as catechists, religious assistants, and operators involved in recreation and socialization activities. Another important role is organizing and managing cultural events, sporting events/coaching, and religious gatherings. The remaining part of volunteerism in this category is split between accountants, nurses, professional workers in social integration and rehabilitation, social assistants, cultural mediators, and those who collect food and essential items for donation. These occupations are most common among nonprofit volunteers (35.3%), while these are much less present among direct volunteers (15.2%). This group is mostly composed of male volunteers (31.4%), with high educational levels (about 30% among people with at least an upper or postsecondary certificate). The eighth major group, elementary occupations, consists of 14.9% of volunteers and encompasses unqualified volunteer activities. This group includes several generic occupations, characterized by tasks requiring a low skill set, such as domestic help, environmental cleaning campaigns, and pet caretakers. These activities are spread among direct volunteers (17.1%). Such activities are typically performed by the lower educated population (23.5% among people with at most a primary school certificate) and people who are usually out of the job market (15.9%). However, the organization-based volunteers doing street-level fundraising activities also belong to this category. These volunteers form the essential interface between the general public and the mission of the association. In Italian, the term used is dialogatori, meaning dialogue-triggers, because the activity is matched to street-level leaflet distribution. A smaller group (7.8%) of volunteers carry out intellectual or scientific activities, requiring a set of elevated skills and competencies. They are classified in the second major group, the professionals. To this group belong doctors, veterinarians, lawyers, journalists and language teachers, artists from various disciplines, PR specialists, brand experts and press agents, and social and orientation assistants. Regarding this group of occupations, there is no significant difference between direct and organization-based volunteers, nor is there a gender difference, while the link with the education level is very clear. Of people performing this type of activities, 21.5% have a university degree. They are indeed highly qualified volunteers. Volunteers populating the fourth main group, office clerks, carry out white-collar tasks. This group at 6.1% of the total encompasses volunteers performing administrative tasks, clerks and secretaries, and first contact phone operators used by organizations to provide information, field complaints, handle emergency calls, manage help lines, etc. While among direct volunteers, there are some in this group who provide assistance in bureaucratic tasks. Consequently, there are not many

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differences between rates in organization-based and direct volunteering (6.5% vs. 5.5%) for this group. In these roles we find primarily adults (8.5% among people aged 65–74) and individuals with a high school degree (7.1%). Volunteers performing executive management activities constitute 4.7% of this class. Within this first major group of managers belong executives of political parties and unions, as well as managers and leaders of small- and medium-sized associations. In addition, volunteers holding a government office, as well as school board/council members, are part of this group. These occupations are present almost exclusively in organization-based volunteering, where 7.1% of volunteers hold some kind of managerial role. Furthermore, there is a clear gender gap in this group; 6.1% of men compared to 2.7% of women carry out managerial activities in their volunteer work. Volunteer managers are mainly adults (5.4% among people aged 45–74), employed people (5.5%), and people with a medium to high educational level (about 6% of them hold at least an upper or postsecondary degree). The percentage of those who work in the sixth and seventh major groups, skilled agricultural, forestry, fishery, and craft and related trades, is 2.6%. Here one finds the carpenters, mechanics, tailors, and farmers. These occupations are more prevalent among direct volunteers (4.5%). These occupations are committed to providing minor repairs, caring for green spaces, and other community support activities and are performed primarily by men (4.1%) and the elderly (4.5%). Another 2.6% of volunteers, the plant and machine operators and assemblers, carry out occupational activities such as specialized machinery operations. Within this volunteer category, the vehicle drivers are of particular interest. This task has the same spread in direct and in organization-based volunteering. In fact, we find both ambulance drivers and those who perform “social driver” duties, giving direct help to people in need of a ride. This occupation is widespread among men (4.0%) and people with a lower educational level (4.2% among people hold at most a primary school certificate). As a final post-analysis observation, it emerges that the organization-based volunteers are on average more qualified and their activities more diversified than those performed by direct volunteers, who are very focused on social and personal services. Finally, by focusing on the time commitment given by volunteers, it becomes clear how the activity provided plays a central role in their lives. Volunteers offer the community a great deal of availability. They spend on average 20 hours a month to provide their services, regardless of the type of task they perform. The most time-­ consuming occupations for volunteers are the ones where a more advanced skill set is required. Those who lead and manage organizations provide on average 24.6 hours of volunteer services per month, while professionals spend 21.7 hours a month. High commitment is also found in volunteers performing office duties (21.4 hours per month) and in people dealing with qualified service jobs (20.4 hours per month). The activities that require less time are those that require elementary qualifications (18.1 hours per month) because they may be performed with greater autonomy, when time is available. Despite this, even for the simplest volunteer jobs, the effort provided is more than 4 hours per week.

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10%

North-west

North-east

Center

South

20%

30%

40%

33.4

50%

60%

70%

27.4

30.1

16.0

26.3

34.5

8.4

15.5

28.8

5.1

7.8

8.3

12.7

100%

90%

7.8

15.3

27.2

37.4

80%

6.8

4.9 2.2 3.1

5.5

3.7

2.8

5.5

4.4 2.3 2.4

6.0

4.0 2.4 1.9

Service workers - 5

Technicians - 3

Elementary occupations - 8

Professionals - 2

Clerks - 4

Managers - 1

Craft and related trades workers- 6

Machine operators - 7

Fig. 8.3  Volunteers aged 15 and over by occupations and territory (NUTS 1) – year 2013. (Source: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life Survey)

8.4.2  D  ifferences of Voluntary Occupations Across the Italian Territory Analyzing the distribution of major groups of occupations in relation to the Italian territorial varieties reveals that the qualified commercial occupations and services are widespread across all regions; however, the percentage of volunteers who carry out these activities is higher in the southern macro-region (37.4%) than in the northern macro-regions13 (Fig. 8.3). This evidence is the result of two factors. First, in the south, direct volunteering is more widespread than the organization-based, which, as shown, is characterized by a denser presence of service occupations. Second, organizations in the southern region deal with personal/health services more extensively than those operating in the north; 29.2% of organized volunteers in the south perform personal services compared to 25.2% in the northeast and 21.5% in the northwest. These statistics seem to suggest the supplementary function that both organization-based and direct volunteering provide in areas of lacking welfare services. The technical occupations also follow this pattern. In the south similar or slightly higher quotas are reached than in other Italian territories due to the strong presence of these skills in direct volunteering (19.3% vs. 15.3% in the northeast and 11% in the northwest). On the other hand, the other professionals are not very present in the southern regions. In

 Subnational analyses are carried out at NUTS 1 level, as it is not possible to deepen them at regional level (NUTS 2): the data relating to the occupations are not reliable for this territorial detail.

13

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these territories, volunteer work seems to be much less varied, offering a more limited range of services and concentrating especially on aid to people. Finally, occupations at the extremes of the classification system are particularly lacking in the south. Both the highest qualified group, managers and professionals, and the most basic, elementary occupations, are less common in this region. This happens presumably due to the lower presence of organization-based volunteering and due to the more limited size of organizations present in the south. Elementary occupations often form the operational base of larger organizations that involve both high levels and lower operational levels. In fact, it is more difficult in small organizations to streamline job duties into an elementary profession or a managerial one, since volunteers are involved in the whole organizational process. As already examined thanks to the profiles of the volunteers built on the basis of the descriptions of the volunteers’ activities (Sect. 8.3), the examination of the characteristics of the voluntary occupations, classified according to the system used for the paid labor market, provides a picture of volunteer work very similar to that present in the Italian labor market. With the same difficulties, although attenuated, gender segregation and territorial differences play a part in both in participation rates and in the distribution of occupations.

8.5  Volunteer Work and Paid Work in Comparison In order to study the differences and the similarities between volunteer work and paid work, the ILO module data on volunteer occupations was compared with Labor Force Survey data on paid occupations. With respect to the paid labor market, volunteering is imbedded in more occupations related to assistance (Fig. 8.4). Volunteers are found as technical figures (+9.6 percentage points) mostly in organization-based volunteering (+17.5 pp), and as service workers (+15.2 pp), especially in direct volunteering (+27.7 pp). Even the elementary occupations are subsidized by direct volunteer work at a higher rate than what is required by the labor market (+4.2 pp). On the other hand, the managerial occupations are practiced more in the field of organization-based volunteering than what is seen in the labor market (+4.4 pp), confirming how volunteering in this field allows the acquisition and/or the experimentation of important skills, which can eventually be transferred to the paid occupational field (see Sect. 8.3.2). The occupations that are less present in volunteer work than in paid work are linked to types of activities that have less relation to services and assistance to people but are strongly linked to the production of goods (−13.1 pp. for craft, trade workers, and farmers and −5.4 for plant and machine operators and assemblers). Even professionals and office clerks are less present in volunteering than are required by the labor market (respectively, −6.0 and −5.5 pp).

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Total volunteer worker

Organization-based volunteer worker

Direct volunteer worker

Paid worker

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Services workers 5

Technicians 3

Elementary occupations 8

Professionals 2

Clerks 4

Managers 1

Craft and related trades workers 6

Machine operators 7

Fig. 8.4  Volunteers and paid workers aged 15 and over by type of occupation  – year 2013. (Sources: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life Survey; Labor Force Survey)

unknown paid occ

same paid occ

lower paid occ

higher paid occ

5.2 30.0 40.3

42.3

36.5 56.4

56.7 74.3 85.1

87.5

10.1 44.8

28.4

27.9

58.3

22.7

39.4 21.9

13.4 24.5 15.2

12.5 Managers 1

Professionals 2

Technicians 3

Clerks 4

19.3 8.2 Service workers 5

Craft and related trades workers 6

12.3 Machine operators and assemblers 7

13.5 Elementary occupations 8

9.3 Total

Fig. 8.5  Employed volunteers aged 15 and over by type of occupation carried out in volunteer work and coherence with their paid occupation – year 2013. (Sources: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life)

8.5.1  A Skills Comparison of Employed Volunteers Restricting the analysis to employed volunteers, it is possible to explore the level of coherence between the professionals performing their paid work and the skills of volunteers. On average only 21.9% of volunteers carry out a volunteering activity at

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the same level as their paid professional counterpart (Fig.  8.5). In particular, the greater coherence concerns lie with the specialist occupations (58.3%), followed by qualified workers (39.4%) and technical occupations (24.5%). In these groups there are professions such as doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants, and social services technicians, who apply their skills to the service of the community either through an organization or directly. Considering that the classification system reflects a hierarchical structure based on different levels of competence required to do a job, it can be said that the volunteers who carry out an unpaid activity at a lower level than the paid profession clearly prevail (40.3%). The skills acquired by working are not always useful to the community, so it emerges that people carry out an unpaid activity that best reflects their attitudes, desire, or perceived need, rather than what they have learned by performing previous paid work activities. About 57% of those engaged in unpaid office work and qualified occupations in services, corresponding to the fourth and fifth major groups, carry out higher-level occupations as paid work. In many cases, volunteers put themselves at the service of others to fill emerging needs, carrying out humble jobs such as those of assistance and care or simple elementary tasks (85.1%), despite having a high level of education. Regardless of this fact, for 28.4% of employed volunteers, volunteering allows them to carry out more qualified activities than those previously performed in their paid work, thus having the opportunity to improve their skills. Upon analysis of the volunteers of the third main group who practice technical occupations, it can be noted that out of 100 people who carry out a technical type of volunteer occupation, 45 commit themselves for no pay to a higher activity by level of competence than that carried out in the job market. The same result occurs for 36.5% of professionals and 87.5% of managers, for whom volunteering is a way to put in practice their personality and professionalism, going beyond what they normally do in their paid work. The analyzed data leads to the conclusion that volunteering is not just a school of democracy (Chap. 12), in which choices, values, and ideals are taught and shared, but also a place where volunteers acquire skills different from those developed in the workplace and which improve their performance in their paid job activities. However, only 4.1% of those employed have the perception of this improvement14 to the point where they would declare that they had acquired useful job skills from their volunteering experience. The group acknowledging such advantage rises to 6% for those who have carried out professional activities, which, as we have seen before, primarily perform the same occupation in both arenas. More numerous, on the other hand, are the employed volunteers who have declared that they have been able to exploit previous experiences thanks to their volunteer activity (12.3%), with the maximum once again among those who volunteer as professionals (22.8%) or

 Among the additional questions of the Italian module on volunteer work, we find the three main meanings of volunteering (Chap. 5).

14

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technicians (17.6%). Ultimately, for employed volunteers, the interrelations between their fields of service seem to be fluid and multiple.

8.5.2  V  olunteers and Employability: Different Activities for Different Motivations Among the additional questions of the Italian module on volunteer work, we find the three main motivations that led to undertake the activity (Chap. 10). Volunteers who have indicated at least one individualistic motivation,15 linked to employability, are 11.5%. This statistic rises to 21.6% among students, who are therefore aware of the formative importance of their volunteer activity, even if this importance is also perceived by employed volunteers aged 15–24, among which 21.8% indicate a motivation linked to the growth of their skills. Among the non-employed volunteers who carry out activities with an individual motivation and mainly perform high-level occupations, 8.1% are managers, 10.6% are professionals, 29.9% are technicians, and 9.1% are clerks (Fig.  8.6). These groups are finding volunteering to be an important test for one’s capabilities, in particular for those who have yet to enter the labor market. Coming from the Italian educational system, it is in fact quite rare for students to leave their years of study with high practical skills in the areas of organization and management. Further, there are relatively few young people who have had the 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Managers 1

Professionals 2

Total not employed

Technicians 3

Clerks 4

Service workers Craft and related Machine 5 trades workers operators and 6 assemblers 7

Not employed with individualistic motivations

Elementary occupations 8

Not employed wity others motivations

Fig. 8.6  Not employed volunteers aged 15 and over by type of volunteer occupation and type of motivation – year 2013. (Sources: Author’s elaboration from Istat Aspects of Daily Life)

 For professional enrichment and/or to have more job opportunities; to explore their own strengths and put to test oneself; to enhance own skills and experiences.

15

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opportunity to gain work experience over the high school years. Therefore, younger volunteers, who acquire these skills by carrying out medium-high professional activities, will presumably have an advantage over non-volunteers as they enter the job market.

8.6  Skills Necessary for Volunteer Activities The information gathered by Istat in the survey on occupations16 provides a valid tool for an in-depth analysis of volunteer occupations and highlights some features of their profile. This survey aims to describe and measure, by means of standardized indicators, the profile of all occupations in the job market. The profiles include the knowledge, skills, competences, and attitudes required for each occupation as well as the duties, values, and working conditions implied. The approach adopted by ILO, that is, the application of the official classification of occupations to volunteer occupations, makes it possible to describe the profiles of volunteer occupations. Despite the caution required in comparing the replies of workers to those of volunteers, it seems possible to extend the description of their occupation provided by paid workers, to volunteer occupations. As a matter of fact, volunteer work is done alongside paid work and sometimes replaces, supplements, and even innovates it, especially in areas not covered by the job market. Therefore, it appears legitimate to borrow the data gathered from the classification of occupations to shed light on the parallel universe of volunteering; it is a universe that is still unexplored but called to act on the same field and perform the same duties, although under different conditions. This approach, however, does not account for the human commitment and values that characterize volunteer activities. Comparing paid workers to volunteers means recognizing the dignity of volunteer work. Before discussing the findings, it is necessary to clarify some methodological aspects. In the first place, attention was focused only on those occupational units (OU) corresponding to the most common volunteer activities, that is, those with a frequency of answers to the question on the type of work done equal to or higher than 2%. Overall, it is a set of 12 occupational units (OU) including 60% of the volunteer workforce, as described below: • • • • • • • • 16

Personal care workers (in home) Childcare workers Technicians of rehabilitation and social integration Companionship and other qualified family services workers Domestic cleaners and helpers Secretaries Conference, exhibition, and event planners Street vendors

 For more details see Gallo et al. (2009).

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Organizers of religious activities Car, taxi, and van drivers Sports coaches and instructors Personal care workers in health and social services Working activities not elsewhere classified (mostly blood donations)

The results relating to these occupational units obtained from the 2012 survey on occupations have been attributed to volunteer workers engaged in these activities. This paragraph only explores three of the many dimensions on which the survey focused: skills, styles, and values. The individual behavioral and emotional characteristics most appropriate for the occupations will be discussed. The data related to the three dimensions for the abovementioned occupations was compared with the data of all the occupational units included in the classification. This way the profile of the units selected to represent the volunteer sector was compared with the rest of the occupational world to highlight the distinctive characteristics of volunteer work. Starting with the domain of skills, if one ranks the mean values attributed to the occupational units in question, ten skills stand out as the most important for the most common volunteer occupations. These include language skills (active listening, speaking, understanding written texts, writing), socially oriented job vocation (service orientation, understanding other people, capability to adapt and coordinate with others), and process management and control capabilities (time management, critical thinking, active learning). As a whole, these competences are common to volunteers who are familiar with the use of language and communication, who have a talent to interact with other people and understand their needs. These volunteers must also be able to adapt themselves to situations and provide assistance, as well as to manage resources and learn by doing.

Active listening Speaking Service orientation Adaptability Understanding others Time management Understanding written texts Critical thinking Active learning Writing 0

10

20

All Occupational Units

30

40

50

60

70

80

Volunteer Occupational Unit

Fig. 8.7  Main skills required of volunteers by level of importance. (Source: Michelini et  al. 2016, p. 264)

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If one compares the levels of importance calculated to be attached to these competences by volunteers with the levels of importance attached by all workers on the job market, significant differences emerge (Fig. 8.7). Those who are engaged in volunteering attach greater importance to service orientation (68 vs. 55), understanding other people (65 vs. 50), and active listening (75 vs. 72) than the group of workers as a whole. Competences related to speaking, time management, and adaptability are among those that are considered as most important by volunteers with minimal differences from all other workers. The most common volunteer occupations also require a set of competences, such as writing, understanding written texts, critical thinking, and active learning. Despite their importance, volunteers appear not to attach the same level of importance to these qualities as the group of workers as a whole. This shows that volunteer occupations lack momentum toward evolution and planning for the future. The same applies to critical thinking and active learning. Not attaching great importance to identifying the strong and weak points of an argument and to understanding how new information can help solve problems and make decisions testifies to an attitude that keeps volunteering lagging behind. Volunteer occupations mainly deal with providing assistance and caregiving, which explains why volunteers attach less importance to intellectual competences than paid workers do. However, volunteers should be encouraged to invest more time and resources in the development of volunteer occupations, including job training. As a matter of fact, some volunteer occupations require high levels of education and competences, just like paid occupations. This means that there are volunteers capable of creating greater impetus and promoting the importance of volunteer occupations. Moving on to the ethical dimension explored by the survey, it appears clear that volunteer occupations attach great importance to ethics. Unlike paid occupations, the most common volunteer occupations attach the utmost importance to altruism and moral integrity: 83 vs. 73 and 85 vs. 78. A similar dimension explored in the survey deals with the manner in which the job is done and confirms the importance of the ethical component in volunteering. Workers performing the most common volunteer occupations believe that caring for other people’s needs and feelings and being sympathetic and helpful are very important. The difference from the level of importance attached by all paid workers is significant: 73 as opposed to 55. Another useful element to consider in drawing a professional profile of volunteer workers has to do with the personality most suitable to the occupation. Respondents were asked to rank the six personalities proposed – realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional  – starting from the most suitable for their occupation. The responses calculated for the most typical voluntary occupations were unexpected; it was not the social personality to be ranked first, but the entrepreneurial one. The virtues of being cooperative, sociable, extroverted, generous, and sympathetic were overtaken by being self-confident, convincing, energetic, talkative, adventurous, and capable of establishing social relationships. From these findings, one may observe that while the ethical dimension of volunteering is confirmed, in identifying the personality most suitable for facing

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volunteer work, it appears that the social dimension of volunteering demands enterprise and initiative. Volunteer occupations involve continuous contact with discomfort and the most urgent human needs and therefore require self-confidence, energy, an extroverted attitude, and the ability to face risks and unexpected events or complications. Overall, the features of volunteer work that have emerged from these pages, while also being present in paid occupations, do help to trace a clear and better defined profile of volunteer workers who appear to have a polyhedral and complex personality based on the skills, styles, and values identified above. The competences developed in the context of volunteering are an added value for paid occupations and enrich the professional experience required in paid occupations.

8.7  Concluding Remarks This chapter analyzes volunteer work from an innovative perspective, which establishes a parallelism with the traditional paid work activities, under the assumption that it is possible to study volunteering in a way analogous to how the labor market is studied in classic economic literature. Both the textual analysis of the narratives of the volunteer work and the subsequent ones, based on the official classification of the occupations, confirm the initial hypothesis. It is correct and very useful to analyze volunteering using the categories of the labor market, which make possible a very detailed description of the professional skills of the volunteers and the analysis of macro and micro interrelations between volunteering and paid work. Previous studies have already highlighted how the nonprofit sector has offered, in recent decades, a significant and relevant contribution to the structuring of the Italian welfare system. This is an evolution that has also crossed over into the field of social occupations, which developed in the third sector and then became part of the official occupations also on the labor market. A prime example is that of the social worker. The textual analysis of the descriptions given by volunteers clearly brings out areas where volunteering is a factor of innovation in social occupations, bringing out the figures of dialogue-triggers, operators involved in recreation and socialization activities, and fundraisers. At a macro level, the main result is that, with respect to the paid labor market, volunteering works cohesively in more occupations related to assistance, both as technical figures, mainly involved in organization-based volunteering, and as service workers, especially involved in direct volunteering. Even the elementary occupations are more present in volunteer work, mainly direct volunteering, than what is required by the labor market. On the other hand, the managerial occupations are practiced more in the field of organization-based volunteering than in the labor market, confirming how volunteering in this field allows the acquisition and/or the experimentation of important skills, which can eventually be transferred to the paid professional field.

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Both the textual analysis of the narratives of the volunteer workers and the subsequent ones, based on the official classification of the occupations, confirm that within the Italian labor market, gender and territory are characteristics that have a significant impact on the type of occupations performed by volunteers, also reproducing in this context the distortions present in the Italian labor market. In fact, women volunteer most in care and assistance and men in the technical and managerial activities. Moreover, the central-north macro-regions are characterized by a more diversified volunteer base with a more expressive orientation, against the southern macro-region with a prevalence of service-oriented volunteering, concentrated on the service of personal assistance. At a micro level, this chapter delves into the relationship of employed volunteers between their paid work and their volunteer work. Although for the majority, the tasks performed on a voluntary basis require equal or lower qualifications than those performed for paid work, almost three out of ten volunteers carry out activities at a higher skill level, thus having the opportunity to improve their skills. Among volunteers who already work, few declare that they perceive an improvement in their own skills for the purposes of their paid work; however, this link is felt more by the unemployed and in particular among the young students. One out of five thinks that volunteering improves their own employability potential. In this regard, this chapter highlights the role that volunteering plays with respect to the training and the acquisition of specific skills, which differ from the average skills present in the labor market. To define the content and to compare it with paid work, the authors calculated the average level of importance attributed by the most widespread volunteer occupations to the 35 skills proposed by the Istat survey on occupations. The first ten skills, those with the highest levels of importance, represent the founding nucleus of the professional profile of those who carry out voluntary activities, since they include a set of skills transversally recognized to be important by most volunteer occupations. Some of these qualities are very specific to voluntary action, such as active listening, service orientation, understanding the needs of others, time management, and the ability to adapt and coordinate with others. Another useful element to consider in representing an occupational profile of volunteers has to do with the personality best suited to the activity being performed. The most typical voluntary occupations are linked to the entrepreneurial personality, rather than the social one, which would have been easily expected. Being self-­ confident, convincing, energetic, talkative, adventurous, and capable of establishing social relationships seems to better describe the volunteers’ personality than being cooperative, sociable, extroverted, generous, and understanding. From this finding, one can observe that while the ethical dimension of volunteering is validated, in identifying the most suitable personality to perform the volunteer work, it seems that the social dimension of the voluntary service requires enterprise and initiative. Taken together, such characteristics that define the identity of a volunteer are of great importance also for the evaluation of the skills required by the labor market. In this sense, it is correct to speak of “transversal skills” or skills that characterize voluntary action regardless of the type of activity performed. Their relevance

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contributes to defining the professionalizing value of volunteering, if one considers that those who dedicate themselves to free-will activities inevitably pour out certain skills acquired in their unpaid work, into their professional sphere. Details and impacts of this spill-over effect remain to be further studied. Consider how it would be important for people seeking their first job or for employees in low-skilled jobs, which flattens them to low-skilled tout court, if the volunteer experience were of value on the curriculum vitae and could facilitate the recognition of skills acquired through volunteering.

References Baines, S., & Hardill, I. (2008). At least I can do something: The work of volunteering in a community beset by Worklessness. Social Policy and Society, 7(03), 307–317. Caudron, S. (1994). Volunteer efforts offer low-cost training options. The Personnel Journal, 73(6), 38–46. Cedefop. (2015). European guidelines for validating non-formal and informal learning (Cedefop reference series; No 104.). Luxembourg: Publications Office. https://doi.org/10.2801/008370. Collins, M. (1996). A new statistical parser based on bigram lexical dependencies. In Proceedings of the 34th annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics, 184–191, Association for Computational Linguistics. Corden, A., & Sainsbury, R. (2005). Volunteering for employment skills- a qualitative research study. https://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/pdf/ves1.pdf Flap, H. (2002). No man is an island: The research programme of a social capital theory. In O. Faverau & E. Lazega (Eds.), Conventions and structures in economic organization. Markets, networks and hierarchies (pp. 29–59). London: Edward Elgar. Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Ashforth, B. E. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 14–38. Gallo, F., & Scalisi, P. (Eds.). (2013). La classificazione delle professioni. Roma: Istat. Gallo F., Scalisi P., Scarnera A. (2009). L’indagine sulle professioni. Contenuti, metodologia e organizzazione, Istat, Roma. Gay, P. (1998). Getting into work: Volunteering for employability. Voluntary Action., 1(1), 55–67. Gay, P., & Hatch, S. (1983). Voluntary work and unemployment. London: Policy Studies Institute. Granovetter, M. S. (1976). Getting a job: A study of contacts and careers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Grimaldi, A.  Porcelli R. and A.  Rossi. (2014). Orientamento: dimensioni e strumenti per l’occupabilità. La proposta dell’Isfol al servizio dei giovani. Osservatorio Isfol n. 1–2. Hillage, J., & Pollard, E. (1998). Employability: Developing a framework for policy analysis. London: Department for Education and Employment. Hirst, A. (2001). Links between volunteering and employability. Research report,. London: DfES. ILO. (2011). Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. Genève: International Labour Office. ILO. (2013). Resolution Concerning Statistics of Work, Employment and Labour Underutilization, Genève, International Labour Office. Kamerâde, D., & Bennett, M. (2015). Unemployment, volunteering, subjective well-being and mental health. TSI working paper no. 8. Kamerâde, D., & Paine, A. E. (2014). Volunteering and employability: Implications for policy and practice. Voluntary Sector Review., 5(2), 259–273. Krahn, H., Lowe, G. S., and Lehmann, W. (2002). Acquisition of Employability Skills by High School Students, Canadian Public Policy., 28(2), 275–295. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal and coping. New York: Springer.

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Low, N, Butt, S, Ellis Paine, A, & Davis Smith, J (2007). Helping out: A national survey of volunteering and charitable giving. www.swyddfacabinet.gov.uk/third_sector/documents/research_ statistics/helping_out_national_survey_2007.pdf McKee-Ryan, F., Song, Z., Wanberg, C.  R., & Kinicki, A.  J. (2005). Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: A meta-analytic study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(1), 53. McQuaid, R.  W., & Lindsay, C. (2005). The concept of employability. Urban Studies., 42(2), 197–219. Michelini, M., Musella, M., Scalisi, P., & Ragozini, G. (2016). Professioni emergenti, competenze trasversali. Interconnessioni tra volontariato e mercato del lavoro. In Guidi et al. (Eds.), Volontari e attività volontarie in Italia. Antecedenti, impatti, esplorazioni (pp.  239–269). Bologna: il Mulino. Musella, M., Amati, F., & Santoro, M. (2015). Per una teoria economica del volontariato (Vol. 1). Torino: G. Giappichelli Editore. Muthuri, J., Moon, J., and Matten, D. (2006). Employee Volunteering and the Creation of Social Capital, ICCSR Research Paper Series, No. 34. Newton, B., Oakley, J., & Pollard, E. (2011). Volunteering: supporting transitions [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 29.08.2012, from https://www.employment-­studies.co.uk/pubs/report. php?id=vsupptrans Nichols, G., & Ralston, R. (2011). Social inclusion through volunteering: The legacy potential of the 2012 Olympic games. Sociology the Journal of the British Sociological Association., 45(5), 900–914. Ockenden, N., & Hill, M. (2009). A gateway to work? The role of volunteer centres in supporting the link between volunteering and employability. Paper presented at the NCVO/VSNN Researching Voluntary Sector Conference. Paine, A.E., McKay, S. and Moro, D. (2013). Does volunteering improve employability? Insights from the British Household Panel Survey and beyond, Voluntary Sector Review. Peterson, D.  K. (2004). Benefits of participation in corporate volunteer programs: Employees’ perceptions. Personnel Review., 33(6), 615–627. Rochester, C., Donahue, K., Grotz, J., Hill, M., Ockenden, N., & Unell, J. (2009). A gateway to work: The role of Volunteer Centres in supporting the link between volunteering and employability. London: Institute for Voluntary Research. Santelli, F., Ragozini, G., & Musella, M. (2018) What volunteers do? A textual analysis of voluntary activities in the Italian context. In Iezzi et al. (Eds.) JADT’ 2018: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on statistical analysis of textual data, Universitalia, Rome. Strauß, S. (2008). Volunteering and social inclusion: Interrelations between unemployment and civic engagement in Germany and Great Britain. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer VS. Trickey, H., Kellard, K., Walker, R., Ashworth, K., & Smith, A. (1998). Unemployment and job seeking two years on. London: Department of Social Security Research. Tuffrey, M. (2003). Good companies, better employees: How community involvement and good corporate citizenship can enhance employee morale, motivation, commitment and performance. London: Corporate Citizenship. Van Der Heijde, C. M., & Van Der Heijden, B. (2006). A competence‐based and multidimensional operationalization and measurement of employability, Human Resource Management., 45(3), 449–476. Weiss, S. M., Indurkhya, N., Zhang, T. & Damerau, F. (2005). Text Mining Predictive Methods for Analyzing Unstructured Information. New York: Springer. Wilkinson, J., & Bittman, M. (2002). Neighbourly Acts:Volunteering, Social Capital and Democracy. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 7(2), 32–44.

Chapter 9

A Late-ModernTransformation of the Motivations to Volunteer? A Social Perspective on Italy Riccardo Guidi and Lorenzo Maraviglia

9.1  Introduction This chapter focuses on the subjective meanings of volunteering in Italy. We take a social perspective (Hustinx et al., 2015) and analyze the relations between groups of motivations and the perceived subjective impacts of organized volunteering on the one hand and the individual and contextual characteristics of Italian volunteers on the other hand. Theoretically, we deal with hypotheses concerning the “late-­modern” transformations of social and political participation (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Giddens, 1991), in the perspective to make them “socially situated”, “culturally embedded” and “temporarily dependent” (Dawson, 2012: 310). The meanings of action have long been examined in the social sciences. The sociological theories of Max Weber suggest that human action structurally implies a subjective meaning, and analyses are focused on how social actors signify reality. From this perspective, studying the meanings of volunteering can be a strategy to investigate its intrinsic polysemy. Various voluntary actions can be included in a formal unifying definition of volunteering (such as that of ILO, 2011), but they will vary extensively depending on the meanings volunteers attribute to them (see also Chap. 3 on this). The Durkheimian tradition of sociological analysis highlights

Data analyses and tables here presented are the same of Guidi and Maraviglia (2016). The other parts of this chapter partly constitute original developments of that work. Riccardo Guidi authored Sects. 9.1, 9.2, and 9.4 and Lorenzo Maraviglia Sects. 9.3.

R. Guidi () Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] L. Maraviglia Statistical Office, Province of Lucca, Lucca, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Guidi et al. (eds.), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70546-6_9

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instead structural features and suggests that the processes through which volunteers give their own actions a meaning are neither atomistic nor the result of narrow interactions alone: individual, contextual, material, cognitive, and institutional factors can all affect the motivations to volunteer. Since the 1970s, the motivations to volunteer (henceforth MTV) have been “one of the most frequently researched topics in the field of volunteering research” (Hustinx et al., 2015: 97) and have increasingly become of interest to practitioners. Literature on the MTV helps to understand the persistence of giving and altruistic behavior in contemporary societies and the limitations of the homo oeconomicus perspective (Caillé, 1998; Godbout, 2002; Titmuss, 1970).  A “non-parsimonious anthropology” (Hirschman, 1987) has become regarded as necessary in all the social sciences when attempting to understand why people act, and this led empirical studies of MTV to increase substantially after the 1990s (Wilson, 2000). MTV have been effectively examined in functionalist terms (Clary et al., 1996), while a more recent social perspective suggests that “the context influences the use of motives” (Hustinx et al., 2015: 98) and addresses the late-modern shift from traditional and value-based to individualized and self-oriented styles of participation. This transformation would characterize the actions of volunteers in contemporary Western societies and younger generations in particular (Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003). The aim of this contribution is to further develop the study of subjective meanings of volunteering in theoretical and empirical terms. Theoretically, we contribute to the debate on late-modern transformations of volunteering, proposing that (a) contextual and individual characteristics, both material and cognitive, can affect the subjective meanings of volunteering and that (b) in complex countries (i.e., countries with a high level of domestic heterogeneity) individual characteristics can be influenced by territorial divides. Empirically, we provide novel insights into the situation in Italy through a complex set of analyses of official social statistical data drawn from the implementation of the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (ILO, 2011) (see Chap. 5). Italy is considered an appropriate context for observing the subjective meanings of volunteering in terms of the complexities of contemporary society (see Chap. 6 on this). This chapter is divided into two sections. We first review the current directions of research about MTV and present our basic assumptions on the subjective meanings of volunteering before proposing three complementary frames of analysis. In the second section, we examine the empirical data and describe the results of our analysis. Finally, we summarize our findings and discuss their contributions to the debate on MTV while critically assessing some of the assumptions concerning late modernity.

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9.2  A  Social Perspective of the Meanings of Volunteering and Some Hypotheses 9.2.1  Studying MTV: Two Directions In the last 40 years, the perceived subjective impacts of volunteering have not received significant attention, while the motivations to volunteer (MTV) have been addressed through various research interests, designs, and hypotheses. A broad strand of literature, mainly in the fields of psychology and microeconomics, has attempted to identify inventories of MTV (Wilson, 2000: 218). These investigations have mainly applied confirmative research designs from a micro perspective and typically validate theoretical models of MTV based on theories of human behavior. Surveys targeting volunteers from homogeneous contexts (organization, territory, etc.) have also been conducted, and various MTV inventories have thus resulted. Cnaan and Goldberg-Glen’s seminal work proposed a mono-dimensional MTV model, according to which all volunteers expect to have a “rewarding experience” (Cnaan & Goldberg-Glen, 1991: 281) combining self- and other-orientations. In Andreoni’s (1990) “impure altruism” model, volunteers are instead regarded to be motivated by the expectation of a personal nonmonetary utility. Gidron (1978) suggested that self- and other-oriented MTV can be distinguished and also highlighted the relevance of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, along with others (Frisch & Gerrard, 1981; Latting, 1990) (bi-dimensional models). A third dimension was added by Ziemek (2006) (investment MTV) and by Chappell and Prince (1997) (value MTV). Other successful inventories are more complex. The six-­ dimensional Volunteer Process Model and Volunteer Functions Inventory of Clary et al. (1996) provide authoritative references for international psychosocial studies of MTV.1 From a functionalist perspective, this model suggests that MTV follow perceived needs and individual objectives through the six dimensions of values, understanding, enhancement, careers, social, and protection. A complementary research area with a basis in sociology and anthropology concerns the relations between MTV, volunteers’ characteristics, and contextual features. Informed by the belief that MTV are complex, changing, and broadly patterned (Musick & Wilson, 2008: 66-79), such research designs are mainly exploratory and sometimes take a comparative perspective. MTV are considered one component of worldviews, ideologies, and cultures, rather than being a direct expression of individual needs (Musick & Wilson, 2008: 71-72). Wuthnow (1991: 50) suggested that motivations can be interpreted as being at “a critical juncture where the individual and the society intersect”. The context will thus significantly influence the motives of volunteers. MTV can also reflect “the prevailing values and beliefs in a society” (Hustinx et al., 2015: 98) and can depend on institutional features such as “non-profit regime” and government social welfare expenditure 1  This proposal has been further articulated by Allison et al. (2002). Complex models have also been proposed by Batson et al. (2002) and Shye (2010).

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(Hustinx et al., 2015: 103-105). Social studies of MTV suggest also that individual-­ level characteristics play a role, finding that young people, males, and those without full-time employment are generally more inclined to self-oriented MTV, while older people, females, and full-time workers exhibit other-oriented MTV (Hustinx et al., 2015: 116). Contemporary sociological studies of MTV have extensively addressed the possible shift from other-oriented, altruistic, and traditional MTV to self-oriented MTV. Late modernity theories suggest the major changes of modernity lead to shifts in social and political participation, as the increasing reflexivity and individualization in (Western) societies reshape social engagement. Giddens (1991) suggested that traditional references for self-definition have become much weaker in late modernity and that social and political participation is more often used to create a personal identity and a satisfactory biography. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) view altruistic practice as increasingly bound up with the search for self-realization, sociality, and pleasure and that it can be highly temporary, occasional, and reversible. Coherent with further proposals, such as Inglehart’s (1990) theory of post-­ materialist value change, Barnes and Kaase’s classic focus on unconventional participation (Barnes & Kaase, 1979), Norris’ view of reinvented political activism (Norris, 2002), and van Deth and Maloney’s (2012) examination of “low cost individualistic participation”, late modernity theories have inspired an approach that focuses on the changing styles of volunteering (Hustinx et  al., 2010; Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2003). Quantitative and qualitative studies in different contexts have, however, tempered some of the radicalism of late-modern view (Guidi et al., 2016; Haenfler et al., 2012; Handy et al., 2010; Hustinx et al., 2010; Hustinx et al., 2015; Hustinx & Lammertyn, 2004; Rheingans & Hollands, 2013; Riley et  al., 2010; Vinken & Diepstraten, 2010). These suggest the shift toward self-oriented participation cannot be easily generalized and mainly involves young people. In addition, late-modern participatory practice does not necessarily contrast with more “traditional” aspects (such as collective identity, materialist political values and structural conditions, political opportunity structures, etc.). Such empirical results appear to support the view of Dawson (2012) that far from being absolute, the sources of late-­ modern cultural change are “socially situated”, “culturally embedded” and “temporarily dependent” (ibid: 310). These studies also help define the real connections between epochal societal transformations (macro), the specifics of contexts and organizations (meso), and individual characteristics (micro) in the understanding of contemporary MTV.

9.2.2  T  erritory, Life Course, and Status: Frames for a Social Understanding of the Meanings of Volunteering We assume that the proposed late-modern transition toward more self-oriented MTV is conditional on contextual and individual characteristics, which significantly affect MTV.  Following the Weberian approach, we conceive the practice of

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volunteering as a non-fortuitous action that is structurally combined with meanings. Although the meanings of an action may not become clear until after the action itself, we consider MTV as the unstable, changing, plural, and subjective dispositions toward voluntary action. Personal biographies are the crucial frames of reference, and all the personal characteristics of a volunteer – before, during, and after the volunteer experience – are all relevant to MTV. In Durkheimian terms, however, individuals are regarded as immersed in a specific context that significantly affects (as constraints and opportunities) both the MTV and the practice of volunteering. We assume that various cultural, institutional, and socioeconomic contextual features may affect personal MTV. We also assume that countries with high levels of domestic heterogeneity have various specific characteristics that must be considered when exploring MTV. Social differentiation in complex countries concerns both individuals and territories. Due to historical factors and more recent changes, individuals who are, for example, significantly older, less active in the labor market, poorer, and less educated than their compatriots may be concentrated in specific areas. Territory, on various scales, can influence a multitude of factors that affect individual MTV. For example, different macro-regions of a country (NUTS 1) may have different institutional traditions, regions (NUTS 2) may have specific “political cultures” (Almond & Verba, 1963), and some areas (e.g., metropolitan areas, NUTS 3+) may include more expression-­ oriented nonprofit organizations than others (e.g., rural areas). Thus, the typical characteristics of territorial contexts (NUTS 1+) must be considered when investigating MTV in complex countries, to provide an intra-country comparative perspective. As discussed in Chap. 6 of this volume, Italy presents an excellent illustration of domestic heterogeneity. Its differences result from a long-term process, which is broad and multifaceted. The centuries-old territorial divide between the central-­ north and the south (NUTS 1 level) is still clearly recognizable in socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional terms. In addition, further differences exist within these broad sub-national areas (NUTS 2+ levels). The specific national traits of our case study and the findings of previous studies indicate that features affecting the meanings of organized volunteering can be categorized into three complementary frames. The first one (territorial cultures and institutions) involves the potential influence of cultural (e.g., religion) and institutional (e.g., nonprofit policies) territorial features. Their relevance lay at the heart of social studies about MTV and is supported in theoretical and empirical terms (Hustinx et al., 2015). Social and political studies of Italy (Caciagli, 2011; Cartocci, 2007, 2011; Putnam, 1993; Trigilia, 1986) help to frame the relevance of territory for MTV in terms of “territorial political subcultures”. These have for a long time provided individual engagement a collective meaning and affected local institutional performances. In Italy, southern regions (sometimes with the exception of Sardinia and Basilicata) have been considered to have a “parochial” political subculture (Almond & Verba, 1963), which is apathetic and involves scarcely differentiated political roles that are largely shaped by localism and “amoral familism” (Banfield, 1958). This subculture corresponds to the territorial dominance of traditional values. The religiosity of these regions is clearly

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higher than in the rest of the country (Cartocci, 2011; see also Chap. 6 of this volume). Here, the influence of the Catholic church on the life of people has historically been substantial and has contributed to preventing the development of alternative social organizations and to delegitimizing State institutions. However, this influence has not led to the establishment of a robust (religious) nonprofit sector: in absolute and relative terms, southern regions have the lowest number of nonprofit organizations, and particularly those with religious bases. Although some sub-regional peculiarities exist (see Chap. 5 of this volume), these are also the regions with the lowest social welfare public expenditure in Italy. Organized volunteering in southern regions can be thus characterized more by traditional and religious meanings than in other areas of the country. The political cultures long observed into the so-called red and white areas of Italy, although significantly weakened in recent years, are very different from that of the south.2 In Almond and Verba’s (1963: 19-20) classic terms, “red” and “white” areas present traits of a “participant” political culture, which is active and oriented toward universal values. This has been conveyed not only through the major political parties (based on socialism and Catholicism), but through a widespread ensemble of social, recreational, and cultural organizations. These regions are at the core of communal Italy, as celebrated by Putnam (1993), and have historically performed well in terms of institutional functioning, electoral participation, and political mobilization. However, the two areas differ significantly in terms of religiosity. Although far more nonprofit religious organizations per capita are found here than in the south, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, which are the biggest regions of the “red” area, are also the most secularized in Italy.3 Conversely, the regions in the “white” area are historically permeated by Catholic culture, organizations, and practice, although religiosity here appears more reflective (Cartocci, 2011). Thus, the MTV in these areas may be more civic-oriented than in southern regions, possibly combined with a religious orientation in the “white” regions. In contrast to the de-spatialized interpretations of change suggested by late-modern theorists, the “sub-political territorial cultures” of Italy may thus exert a long-lasting and specific influence on volunteers’ meaning-making. However, contextual features alone cannot provide a full social understanding of the subjective meanings of volunteering: within the same area, individual differences can affect MTV. Rather than being a general phenomenon, the late-modern transformations toward self-oriented meanings of volunteering may particularly affect individuals with specific social profiles (the post-materialistic cohorts born after the 1960s, who have good economic and cognitive resources and live in the 2  The “red” area is composed of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Umbria, and Marche center-northern regions and the “white” area of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Lombardy northern regions. 3  The secularization divide of Italy is best illustrated by contrasting Florence and Bologna (Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna regional capitals) to the regional capitals of southern regions: according to Cartocci (2011: 131), the former has secularization indexes values four/seven times higher than the latter.

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medium-large urban areas of Western countries), with less of an effect on other profiles. We suggest that individual-level characteristics concerning life courses and status can also affect the subjective meanings of volunteering. The second frame of our investigation, life course, suggests that volunteers can attribute a specific meaning to their own actions that corresponds to their particular life stage. Different MTV can be associated with young vs. old people and males vs. females, with the former having greater self-oriented motives than the latter (Hustinx et al., 2010; Hustinx et al., 2015). Drawing on institutionalist theories concerning life course (Mayer, 2004) and youth transition (Walther, 2006), we regard life stages as more than simply biological events or solely in terms of generational culture, although these are relevant aspects. The interactions between the subjective meanings of the volunteer experience and life stages are sensitive to the context in which people live, due to socioeconomic and institutional reasons. In contemporary Italy the population is old, the public welfare system is weak, the family is the central helping agency, unemployment rates are high, and the labor market is significantly segmented along gender, age, and territorial lines. In this context, a lack of public services, particularly in the south, is faced, leading to many middle-aged women being employed in informal social care activities. The transition to adulthood is often uncertain, shifting, and frustrating, and old age is often associated with solitude. The domestic heterogeneity of Italy fragments this picture: in some sub-­ national areas (e.g., southern regions, Apennine mountainous areas), the situation is markedly more difficult (see Chap. 6 of this volume for further details). Within this specific national context, we may expect volunteering experience to be significantly associated with youth in occupational terms, with older people in social and religious terms, and that middle-aged people with family responsibilities may consider volunteering as a way to compensate for the lack of public services. Social status, however, even within the same life phase and in the same context, also leads to differences. The third frame of our investigation, social centrality, accounts for the possible influence of individual economic and cognitive resources on the meanings of volunteering. The “dominant status model” (Lemon et al., 1972) has informed many empirical investigations into the social antecedents of volunteering (see Chap. 10 of this volume), but it has rarely been applied in social studies of MTV. However, volunteers in a full-time positions can be viewed as distinct from unemployed volunteers, students, housewives, and retirees, with the former regarded as more other-oriented and the latter more self-oriented (Hustinx et al., 2015). Thus, those in better economic situations may be more able to give others time and to be more altruistic, while those who are less skilled, have fewer economic resources, and hold aspirations to improve their own condition may interpret voluntary action in a more instrumental way. In contemporary societies, however, status is not solely expressed through economic resources. Cognitive resources are also important and are not necessarily connected to economic levels. Those with higher cognitive resources are expected to have a more reflexive approach to volunteering. This style may take the form of complex interconnections between the different meanings attributed to their voluntary experience.

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We use these frames to analyze the Italian official social statistical data resulting from the first implementation of the ILO Manual that measures volunteer work (ILO, 2011) (see Chap. 5). The resulting dataset is the best currently available for exploring the meanings of volunteering in Italy from a social perspective, as it enables reliable national and sub-national analyses. The questionnaire also included many questions concerning social aspects.

9.3  Empirical Data, Analytical Strategy, and Results 9.3.1  Data Data drawn from the Aspects of Daily Life (henceforth ADL) Survey conducted by ISTAT provide excellent opportunities to evaluate the empirical relevance of previous interpretative hypotheses. The survey questionnaire includes two questions aimed at detecting the motivations and perceived impacts of doing voluntary work in groups/associations. The empirical distribution of answers within the sample of volunteers4 is reported in Table 9.1. About 62.1% of the respondents selected “because I believe in group’s/association’s goals”, 42.7% “to contribute to community/environment”, 25.6% “to follow my religious beliefs”, and 22.6% “to stay with/meet other people”. In terms of perceived impacts, 50.1% selected “I feel better about myself” 41.6% “I have widened my social network”, 28.1% “I see things in a different way” and 21.8% “I have improved my relational skills”.5 These percentages are reported in the last column of Table 9.1. The total exceeds 100 because respondents were allowed to choose up to three motivations and three impacts, without ranking their preference. About 35% of volunteers chose one, 29% chose two, and 36% opted for three motivations. Similar proportions were observed for perceived impacts (34%, 28%, and 38%, respectively). Comparing single and multiple choices provides some interesting findings. For example, the motivation “to stay with/meet other people” increases from a modest 7.2% among people choosing only one motivation to a substantial 39.2% among those choosing three. This suggests that desiring social relationships is a somewhat diffuse, although possibly latent, feature of volunteering in groups/organizations.

4  The total ADL sample amounts to about 46.000 cases. Data on motivations and perceived impacts are available for a sub-sample of about 3.000 individuals doing voluntary work in groups/ organizations. 5  The frequencies reported in Table  9.1 are weighted according to coefficients provided by ISTAT. However, we use unweighted data to estimate the parameters of the regression models. For a discussion, see Gelman and Hill (2007).

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Table 9.1  Motivations and perceived impacts, weighted frequencies (n = 3,161) Motivations I believe in the group’s/association’s goals To contribute to the community To follow my religious beliefs To stay with/meet other people To satisfy needs not fulfilled by the public sector To follow my friends To value my skills/abilities To acquire professional skills/to get job opportunities To test my abilities Other Perceived impacts I feel better about myself I have widened my social networks I see things in a different way I improved my relational skills I developed a stronger political and civic consciousness I valued my experiences/skills I am more aware and informed I acquired useful job skills Nothing changed I had more disadvantages than advantages Other

Number of selected items One Two Three 41.8 66.2 78.6 17.9 45.3 62.1 17.5 26.2 33.6 7.2 20.8 39.2 5.0 12.1 26.5 5.6 11.1 17.2 1.9 8.8 19.7 0.9 4.5 10.8 0.3 3.0 10.9 1.9 2.1 1.4 Number of selected items One Two Three 36.1 53.7 58.9 14.5 46.2 62.7 11.4 26.9 44.0 2.5 19.5 41.0 10.9 17.3 31.3 7.4 17.7 27.4 4.7 13.3 21.1 0.9 2.6 10.7 7.9 1.7 0.8 1.4 0.5 2.0 2.2 0.6 0.3

Total 62.1 42.7 25.8 22.6 14.8 11.4 10.3 5.5 4.9 1.8 Total 50.1 41.6 28.1 21.8 20.4 17.9 13.3 5.1 3.5 1.4 1.0

Source: Guidi and Maraviglia (2016)

9.3.2  Analytical Strategy For analytical purposes, we group the motivations to volunteer into four classes, according to the theoretical discussion presented in the previous paragraphs: • Self-oriented/individualistic (“to get more job opportunities”, “to test my abilities”, “to value my skills”) • Social (“to stay with/meet other people”, “to follow my friends”) • Religious (“to follow my religious beliefs”) • Civic (“to contribute to the community/environment”, “to satisfy needs not taken into account by public provision”) This classification does not account for those who exclusively selected “I believe in the group’s/association’s goals”. The meaning of such goals should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the nature of the specific organization. About 15% of respondents selected this option, thus resulting in some ambiguity, which

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can be resolved by deleting cases from the analysis or by attributing them to one of the four mentioned motivational classes. Both options have pros and cons. Deleting ambiguous cases provides greater coherence but reduces the sample size, while attributing to a class preserves size but risks some degree of arbitrariness. Those who volunteer in religious organizations can be plausibly attributed a religious motivation (those who only selected “because I believe in the group’s/association’s goals”). But how should we consider those who volunteer in recreational or cultural groups? As civic or socially motivated? Pragmatically, different solutions should be tested to see if they result in the same information content. We thus analyzed the total sample using various imputation techniques and algorithms and also tested a restricted sample using only MTV-­ unambiguous observations. All these methods produced similar results – which we take as a sign of robustness of our approach. We used logistic regressions to evaluate the statistical associations between motivational classes and social features, as previously outlined. For each class we implemented the following steps. First, we estimated three partial models by regressing the outcome (a dummy for the specific motivation) on predictors linked to a hypothesis. For the territory hypothesis, we used the geographic area of residence;6 for the status (social centrality) hypothesis, we used the perceived economic situation, occupational status, and educational achievement; and for the life-course hypothesis, we used age and gender. We then identified features showing higher correlations with the outcome variables by examining the coefficients of the partial models. Second, for each motivational class, we estimated a synthetic model with all of the predictors previously considered. By analyzing the changes in coefficients, we assessed the correlations that were more robust from those isolated in step one. We then enriched the model with other regressors to capture further possible elements of interest. Although this strategy is complex, it has the advantage of providing outcomes that can be visualized in a very compact way. In the following paragraphs, we discuss the regression results for each motivational group and in the final discussion turn to the theoretical considerations.

9.3.3  Regression Results 9.3.3.1  Religious MTV The following variables show significant associations with religious MTV in our partial regression models: • Living in the south of Italy

6  Italian NUTS 2 regions have been grouped into areas, according to the prevailing political subculture. We consider the following areas: “industrial” (northwest regions), “white” (northeast), “red” (center), and “south” (south).

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• Female • A housewife • Over 54 years old. In terms of the scale of the effects, a volunteer living in the south has an estimated likelihood of being religiously motivated that is about 18 points higher than a volunteer living in the north (industrial area); the difference increases to 28 points (53% vs. 28%) when comparing a housewife to an employed volunteer and reduces to 11 points when comparing a mature (above 54 years old) and a young (below 25 years old) volunteer. The synthetic model illustrates that the coefficient associated with living in the south remains unchanged (Table 9.2). This suggests that geographical differences in terms of religious motivation do not depend on whether features such as economic condition, gender, and age are heterogeneously distributed between southern and northern volunteers. On the other side, the coefficient of being female decreases while remaining statistically significant. This suggests that at least part of the statistical association between gender and being religiously motivated is spurious, with respect to other variables in the model. The association religiousness has with being a housewife, and with living in the south, may appear to make female volunteers more prone to religious motivations than they truly are. Similarly, the statistical association between being a housewife and living in the south7 suggests a close connection between housewives and religious motivations. However, when accounting for other variables through multiple regression, the picture changes: information about the area of residence (living in the south) is much more valuable than information about occupational status (being a housewife) when predicting whether a volunteer is religiously motivated. Our last step is to implement the synthetic model with a regressor measuring the frequency of attendance at religious services.8 As expected, service attendance is highly correlated with religious motivations within the sample of volunteers. The main value of this result is that when controlling for service attendance, the coefficient of living in the south remains fairly stable, which suggests that the higher level of religious motivations among southern volunteers is not associated with higher levels of service attendance. Some kind of reference to the religious factor is a somewhat cross-sectional feature for those who volunteer in groups/organizations in the south of Italy and compared to other areas is less correlated to service attendance.

7  As in the previous examples, we focus on attractions within the sample of people doing voluntary work. 8  This is a variable provided by the ADL dataset for all adult individuals.

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Table 9.2  Regression parameters for religious MTV models Religious MTVs Partial models

Intercept AREA (ref. industrial) Red White South ECONOMIC RESOURCES (ref. low) Medium/high OCCUPATIONAL STATUS (ref. employed) Unemployed Housewife Student Retired EDUCATION (ref. low) Medium (high school completion) High (college completion) AGE (ref. < 25) 25_34 35_54 > 54 SEX (ref. male) Female RELIGIOUS SERVICE ATTENDANCE (ref. none) Low Medium High No. of observations AIC

Synthetic models Life-­ Other Territory Status course regressors −1.25 ** −1.08 ** −1.67 ** −2.21 ** −2.97 ** 0.10 −0.12 0.84

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