Does volunteering at events motivate repeat engagement in voluntary service? The case of young adult volunteers at expo milan 2015

Event volunteering is a specific form of episodic volunteering. This study was conducted with a group of young people who volunteered at a cultural event. The aim was to understand the effects of this experience. One thousand nine hundred and forty-five participants completed a questionnaire before volunteering (T1). One thousand and ninety-three of these participants then completed another questionnaire at the end of the event (T2). Five hundred and forty-one of them were contacted six months later and were asked if they were still doing voluntary work (T3). The impact of having satisfactorily fulfilled the needs relating to their voluntary work, the effects of the experience, and their satisfaction with the work were observed in order to determine differences between repeat volunteers and quitters. The results show that the fulfilment of the needs relating to self-oriented motivations and the impact on self esteem are important variables in terms of volunteering at a specific event but not in terms of any ongoing experience.