Determinants of Involvement in Work for Voluntary or Charitable Organizations in European Countries

Abstract

Differences in democratic traditions and socioeconomic development of various countries leave a mark on the extent of involvement in work for voluntary organizations. The author makes an attempt to check whether these differences have an effect on the determinants of such kind of involvement. Socioeconomic status, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation were considered as determinants. Multiple linear regressions based on the data of the third and sixth rounds of European Social Survey (ESS-3 and ESS-6) were used to clarify configurations of the factors’ effect. The analysis has shown that socioeconomic factors and main components of social capital proved insignificant. Instead, the behavioral components of civic engagement and political participation turned out to be the most influential and distributed among most European countries. The influence of participation in social activities on the involvement in work for voluntary or charitable organizations is rather inherent in European societies with stable democracy and developed economy.