5. from The Effects of “Mandatory Volunteerism”on Intentions to Volunteer

Arthur Stukas, Mark Snyder, and E. Gil Clary

The following is from an article that appeared in 1999 in the professional journal Psychological Science.

Two studies suggest that community service requirements can have negative effects on students’ intentions to volunteer freely in the future but only when students feel that they aren’t ready to volunteer or that the requirement is too controlling. Students who are ready to volunteer should be less influenced by requirements to serve.

Students who were not “ready” to volunteer were less affected by the free choice condition—that is, researchers were able to persuade them to volunteer while making sure that they still felt that it was their free choice and they were more likely to want to volunteer in the future than “not ready” students who had been required. Students were just as likely to want to continue volunteering after being required as after having a free choice to volunteer. To avoid the negative effects of mandatory volunteer programs on students’ motivation, institutions should design these programs to contain an element of free choice and to offer programs that allow students to choose the type of volunteer activity they will engage in or allow them to combine personal interests and skills with their service requirements. Researchers found that students who initially did not want to volunteer found that they actually enjoyed helping others if requirements were applied gently and with their input and involvement in the process.