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Fifty-six percent of adult Americans volunteer 19.9 billion hours annually to charitable, religious, educational and other nonprofit organizations (Independent Sector 1998). Therefore, volunteerism represents a critical contribution to the social welfare of the nation. General Adam Clayton Powell and President Bill Clinton have called for citizens to increase their volunteer efforts. Yet as we move into the next millenium, organizations face new challenges for recruiting volunteers. For example, people are increasingly reluctant to make longterm commitments, with many preferring to volunteer online rather than to face-to-face (Daspin 1999). Moreover, traditional expectations about volunteering are changing. Women are volunteering for traditionally male roles, serving as Big Sisters to young men (Thompson 1997) and building homes for Habitat for Humanity (Farley 1998).
Despite its importance, this topic has drawn little attention from consumer researchers. We have identified only two consumer research articles devoted exclusively to volunteer motivations. Nearly twenty years ago, Schram and Dunsing (1981) studied demographic and psychological predictors of volunteering among married women. They found that women are most likely to volunteer ifthey have the support of their husbands and, more generally, a happy marriage. Recently, Fisher and Ackerman (1998) used a...