Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of "Mandatory Volunteerism" On Intentions To Volunteer, Arthur A. Stukas, Mark Snyder, E. Gil Clary

Special Topics, General

With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions. To investigate the consequences of such “mandatory volunteerism” programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college. Results demonstrated that stronger perceptions of external control eliminated an otherwise positive relation between prior volunteer experience and future intentions to volunteer. A second study experimentally compared mandates and choices to serve and included a premeasured assessment of whether students felt external control was necessary to get them to volunteer. After being required or choosing …