Who can Benefit From Volunteer Participation? Analysis of Wellbeing Heterogeneity in Volunteer Participation of Older People

Abstract

The basic premise of this study is that the traditional method to treating all older people as coming from the same distribution misspecifies the true model and ignores potentially important information in wellbeing outcomes of social participation. Using data from the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS), this paper proposes a finite mixture model (FMM) to identify the heterogeneous relationship between volunteer participation and older people’s subjective well-being (SWB) and then explore the determinants of wellbeing heterogeneity in volunteer participation. The results reveal that older people can be classified into two latent subgroups, that is the volunteering beneficiary group (accounting for about 42%) and the volunteering non-beneficiary group (accounting for about 58%). The FMM is therefore more appropriate in estimating the complex impact of volunteering. Rural older people with poorer health, weaker social networks, better economic status, and better community environments are more likely to benefit from volunteer participation. Our findings have suggested some practical implications to increase the probability of benefit from volunteer participation.