Motives and Determinants of Volunteering in Older Adults: An Integrated Model

The present study focused on changes in volunteering over time among Italian adults and examined a model in which motives from self-determination theory (SDT) were hypothesized to influence a series of social-cognitive processes including self-efficacy judgments and constructs from the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study was conducted with 312 male (mean age = 66.10; SD = 5.28) and 253 female adults (mean age = 66.67; SD = 5.79) who worked as volunteers in several associations and organizations in Italy. In two occasions over the course of several months, participants respectively completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires and responded to telephone interviews which assessed the study's constructs of interest. Structural equation model analyses provided support for the guiding hypothesis and findings suggested that the more general approach of SDT can be successfully integrated with a social-cognitive framework such as the TPB to provide a better insight onto the origins of the cognitive predictors of intentions in older volunteers. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)