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Le contexte géographique influence‐t‐il le bénévolat motivé par l'employabilité? Le rôle de l'insécurité matérielle à l'échelle locale et l'urbanité
Author(s) -
Chum Antony,
Carpenter Sara,
Farrell Eddie,
Mook Laurie,
Handy Femida,
Schugurensky Daniel,
Quarter Jack
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the canadian geographer / le géographe canadien
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.35
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1541-0064
pISSN - 0008-3658
DOI - 10.1111/cag.12167
Subject(s) - employability , odds , context (archaeology) , social capital , sample (material) , human capital , psychology , demographic economics , social psychology , sociology , geography , logistic regression , economic growth , economics , medicine , social science , pedagogy , archaeology , chemistry , chromatography
There is a growing public discourse that volunteering increases the likelihood of finding a better job because it improves social and human capital. While previous studies have largely treated volunteers' motivations as individualistically determined, contextual determinants of volunteers' motivations are relatively neglected. The purpose of this study is to understand the individual and contextual characteristics in which individuals are more likely to volunteer as a means of improving their employability. Using a random sample of 768 volunteers across Canada, we estimate the independent effects of a) municipal‐level material insecurity, b) urbanicity, and c) individual characteristics on the odds of “volunteering to improve employability.” Our findings show that living in municipalities with high economic insecurity and in urban settings independently increases the odds of volunteering to improve employability. Our study points to evidence of model misspecification, by omission of unobserved geographical covariates, in previous studies of volunteers' motivations.