title: An Investigation of Volunteer Motivation and Psychological Contract for the Effective Management of Sport Event Volunteers
Creators: name: Kim, Eunjung
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Sports events
subject: Volunteers
subject: Human resource management
subject: Cluster analysis
subject: Psychological contract theory
subject: Future behavioural intention
subject: Systematic review

description: Most sport event organisations rely heavily on the assistance of volunteers to prepare for and stage sport events. The significance of the contribution of sport event volunteers highlights the importance of having good recruitment and management strategies in place for sport event management. As volunteer work is most effective when properly managed, it is important to understand the motivations and characteristics of volunteers and maintain good relationships between volunteers and their organisations in order to increase volunteer satisfaction and intention to continue. Attempts to understand the intricacies regarding sport event volunteerism have received much attention from many published studies. This thesis provides a systematic quantitative review of published articles in English language academic journals on the ‘motivation of sport event volunteers’ and ‘volunteer management in events’. The review examines the nature of the research, methods, key concepts, theories used, and types of research questions formulated in studies associated with the ‘motivation of sport event volunteers’ and ‘volunteer management in events’. Published studies on these topics were geographically concentrated in several countries and have been the focus of increasing research attention in recent years. The majority of the published research was limited by the lack of a clear theoretical framework and most studies used survey methods to collect data from volunteers at mega-sport events. The studies regarding volunteer management frequently utilised volunteer motivation to investigate the influence of motivation on volunteer management practice. By conducting a systematic review, this thesis identified the current status of the literature and the research gaps. It developed a better understanding of approaches that have been adopted to investigate what this thesis sought to find, and highlighted the importance and contributions of this thesis. By addressing these research gaps through a systematic review, on the basis of incentives approach of Knoke and Prensky (1984) and sport fan involvement approach grounded in social identity theory, the first empirical study conducted for this thesis was able to identify specific sport event volunteer motivations and to segment sport event volunteers based on their motivations using exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis on standardised variables. Chi-square tests were then undertaken to explore relationships with other variables. This study investigated the distinct features of four motivation-based volunteer sub-groups (i.e. sport &amp; community enthusiasts, altruists, material benefits seekers, and career &amp; relationship seekers) in terms of their socio-demographics, volunteering-related experiences, and the type of sport event at which they volunteered. The results identified that levels and factors of motivation were different amongst the four volunteer sub-groups and were related to each characteristic of volunteers in the groups. Event organisers might be able to use this understanding of different motivational groups to develop more effective volunteer management strategies. The second empirical study in this thesis investigated sport event volunteer motivation and three psychological contract (PC) types (transactional, relational, and ideological) with regard to the relationship between PC fulfilment, satisfaction and future behavioural intention based on PC theory. By conducting exploratory factor analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis on standardised raw variables, Chi-square tests, frequency analysis, ANOVA test, paired t-tests, correlation analysis and regression analysis, four motivation-based volunteer sub-groups were compared regarding expectations and experiences of PC types, as well as overall satisfaction and intention to continue volunteering. PC fulfilment was investigated to find the impact of PC fulfilment on satisfaction and future behavioural intention. Amongst these volunteer sub-groups, ideological PC tended to be considered as the most important PC type, but different motivations were associated with different PC preferences. Volunteers who had different motivations had varying experiences of PC types, overall satisfaction and intention to continue volunteering. Two operational definitions of PC were investigated: PCFe (PC fulfilment by experience) and PCFg (PC fulfilment by gap).The former simply used the post event ratings of volunteers’ experiences of the fulfilment of the psychological contract, while the latter was based on the gap score between pre-event expectations of PC fulfilment and post-event experiences. PCFe (PC fulfilment by experience) was strongly related to overall satisfaction and future behavioural intention, and was found to be a better predictor of volunteer satisfaction than PCFg (PC fulfilment by gap). This thesis contributed to the theoretical body of knowledge in volunteer management by strengthening understanding of issues relating to volunteer motivation and psychological contract as applied to sport event volunteerism. Also, practical implications were provided for the relevant organisations, volunteer coordinators, managers and staff in the sport event industry to develop more advanced volunteer management strategies. This thesis identified five research limitations (e.g. not being able to collect data from all volunteers included in the sampling frame of this thesis, consideration of other possible motivation items, little evidence of PC breach, issue of Common Method Variance and lack of qualitative research methods), and future research directions were suggested based on these research limitations. Taking this research into account, an understanding of volunteer motivations and PC types can improve the effective management of sport event volunteers and increase volunteer satisfaction and intention to continue volunteering. Ultimately, the efforts of sport event organisers and managers to develop advanced volunteer management strategies will contribute to the hosting of successful sport events.