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RQ1/ What motivates people to volunteer at arts festivals?

RQ2/ How do arts festival volunteers differ from volunteers in other forms of activity?

Background

The trend for larger, bigger- budget, and more diverse festival and event experiences calls

for increased professionalism and accountability by event producers, so consequently there

is higher competition and demand for experienced, qualified events professionals (which are

scarce) whilst the demand for volunteers has never been stronger (Getz, 1997). A

‘volunteer’ may be defined as a person who provides a service of their own free will without

expecting remuneration (ibid: 98). Many festivals and events and particularly those within the

private sector, rely heavily on the roles of volunteers to provide direction, planning and

successful coordination, and indeed many festivals have experienced cycles of success and

decline, or even demise, partly due to problems with volunteers (Getz and Frisby,1988). This

may be in part due to the increasing demand for the [relatively] limited supply of volunteers

leading to problems with recruitment of required numbers, but it is often due to key

volunteers ‘burning out’ or ‘rusting out’ (Getz, 1997). ‘Burning out’ refers to attrition through

stressful environments such as large crowds and loud noise, overwork, lack of direction

and/or tangible reward, whilst ‘rust out’ refers to lack of sustained interest due to boring,

unfulfilling tasks (ibid).

In Gibson & Connell (2011), from the results of a three-year longitudinal study conducted on

480 rural festivals (selected from a wider database of 2856 festivals across Australia), they

determined that the average volunteer contributed approximately 24.9 days’ worth of labour

(throughout the planning stages and the actual running of the event) which, across 480

festivals equated to 8600 days or 23 years’ worth of labour. When considering that the

average festival employs an average of 20 volunteers (several enlisting many more) then by

applying this estimate to the researcher’s entire database, it suggests a staggering

1,422,000 days or 3900 years’ worth of labour (ibid). This clearly illustrates that without this

invaluable contribution, many festivals simply could not exist! Hence a greater understanding

of volunteers’ motivations to attend particular types of festivals along with a greater

understanding of their expectations of their festival experience will aid in managing retention

rates of these valuable and often highly experienced human resources. More knowledge

here will allow festival directors to more easily match the volunteer’s festival experience with

their expectations which should encourage loyal and repeated service. This in turn serves to

foster the long term sustainability of festivals and their many benefits to society.

Literature review

A number of common themes, particularly altruism, egoism and self-actualisation emerge

repeatedly throughout the wider literature reviewed. There is much contention about

altruism, for example Smith (as cited in Bharadia, 1986) argues that there is no such thing as

true altruism and states that there are three interacting incentives behind motivation to

volunteer; tangible rewards such as goods or money; interpersonal and intangible awards

(prestige/friendships) and purposive incentives including achievement and self-fulfilment.

Maslow’s (1943) Theory of Human Motivation links a hierarchy of human needs to

motivations for human behaviour in fulfilling physiological needs, and the need for safety,

love, self-esteem and self-actualisation and his theory is underpinning in the reviewed

literature on volunteering, as is Serious Leisure Theory (Stebbins,1982; 1996; Pi et al. 2014)

which argues that volunteering roles in which the volunteer both acquires and employs

specific experience related skills can be classified as serious leisure. This is likened to the

motivations of participants in a marathon, such is the similarity in the involvement (or

immersion) with the event experience. Also underpinning is Social Exchange Theory

(Homans,1958) which suggests that volunteers might begin volunteering with altruistic

intentions but then begin evaluating their intention to continue volunteering against any

perceived lack of tangible reward. All of the themes, concepts, arguments and

methodologies identified in the wider volunteerism literature are highly interesting, insightful

and extremely relevant as they foster development of essential theoretical frameworks for

developing more accurate typologies and phenomenologies. These, when applied can foster

better matching of a volunteer’s expectations of their festival experience with their actual

festival experience. Whilst there is a vast amount of academic literature and seminal works

available on the topic of volunteerism and motivation, an extensive literature search revealed

very little literature on arts-festival specific volunteer studies and no such studies were found

in Australia.

A festival/event specific study was conducted in the USA by Lee et al. (2007) focussing on

volunteer motivations affecting intentions to continue volunteering and found that altruistic

value, ego enhancement, personal development and community concern had significant

positive impacts on a person’s intention to volunteer. Although their methodology involves

intricate structural equation models and requires very large samples, they developed a

reliable model which might be adapted and employed within the narrower focus of studying

volunteer motivations for a specific event typology. Also in the USA, after analysing the

research on volunteerism, Clary et al. (1992) developed a very useful Volunteer Functions

Inventory (VFI) containing thirty reasons why people volunteer and measured six primary

functions identified as common themes from their reviewed literature, those being; values,

understanding, careers, social, esteem and protective (ibid: 335-340). Clary et al. (1998)

suggest that the extent to which the volunteering experiences fulfil these functions relates to

satisfaction with volunteer activities. In Israel, Shye (2010) developed a new approach to

volunteer studies by interviewing and surveying a proportionate random sample of the

general populace rather than only known volunteers, and this methodology has huge

potential to assist with developing strategies for volunteer recruitment from a previously

unstudied, untapped and massive sample of latent volunteerism possibilities.

Discussion

Many theories have been proposed to explain what motivates people to volunteer. The

literature covers a wide variety of such theories from an equally wide variety of disciplines

and suggests a complex system of antecedents that are different depending on the

characteristics of the event or the organisation. That is, it must be accepted that events will

attract different types of volunteers depending on many variables and it has been suggested

that event volunteers are substantially different to other kinds of volunteers and that they

may have some unique volunteer traits, although there is no research to support this (Getz,

1997; 2012). This observation may not be supported by research but it is supported by this

author from many hours of personal volunteering experiences at a wide variety of event

typologies. It is quite reasonable to assume that arts-festival volunteers may very well have

motivations and expectations which are different to those who volunteer at sporting or

political events for example. Research in this field is needed as there is very little (recent and

in general) arts/cultural festival-specific volunteer studies in the literature, most of that

available within the tourism and events discourse focussing predominantly on motivations for

volunteering at special sporting events. Case studies of the Olympic Games being the most

prolific (e.g. Elstad, 1996; Kemp, 2002; Reeser et al., 2005; Karkatsoulis et al., 2005).

Conclusion

Although arts and cultural festivals will always be an integral part of societies and are often

funded by government grants, they usually depend on volunteer resources to be run

successfully and sustainably. Matters pertaining to human resource management are

pertinent when considering that the carrot or stick approaches may not be taken seriously by

volunteers. McGregor’s (1960) Theory Y supports the belief that humans will always strive

for self-actualisation and can be motivated accordingly, and this is the only appropriate

approach to managing volunteers. Therefore, an accurate understanding of their motivations

to volunteer and their expected festival experience will help facilitate this symbiosis.

There is a need to develop event specific volunteer typologies possibly within the spectrum

of altruism and egoism, including all the major themes identified by previous research as a

continuum between these two poles. More research on the perceived benefits of roles and

tasks assigned is also required in order to develop a similar typology scale for matching

volunteers with certain roles. Whilst such a model would have valuable practical applications

for Human Resource managers across the wider conventional employment industries, it is

especially essential for applied events practitioners for better managing recruitment and

retention of volunteer resources which are critical to the viability and success of any festival.

_________________________________________________________________________

References

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Clary, E. G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R. D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A. A., Haugen, J., & Miene, P.

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