Attitudinal and Emotional Outcomes and Drivers of Ordinary and Crisis Volunteering

Abstract

This article examines how crisis volunteering, that is, volunteering in response to needs arising during crises and ordinary volunteering that addresses needs independent of crises, relates to prosocial attitudes and negative emotions, using a four-wave longitudinal survey of Danish adults (n = 1,225) from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hitherto, crisis and ordinary volunteering have been studied in different contexts, crisis versus non-crisis settings, barring direct comparison. By comparing both within the same crisis context, this study contributes a clearer analytical comparison. Findings show that both crisis and ordinary volunteers exhibit stronger prosocial attitudes than the population average, but crisis volunteers report heightened negative emotions. Fixed-effects models show that declines in generalized trust correlate with crisis volunteering, while engagement in ordinary volunteering is associated with subsequent increases in solidarity. Despite these differences, a considerable overlap between previous volunteering and both crisis and ordinary volunteering suggests that both partly emerge from a common volunteer culture.