The Antecedents to Volunteering in Italy: Towards a Complexity-Driven Perspective

The Antecedents to Volunteering in Italy: Toward a Complexity-Driven Perspective Download book PDF Download book EPUB The Antecedents to Volunteering in Italy: Toward a Complexity-Driven Perspective Riccardo Guidi & Lorenzo Maraviglia Chapter First Online: 08 July 2021 238 Accesses Part of the Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies book series (NCSS) Abstract In this chapter we tackle the antecedents of volunteering – one of the most addressed topics in this field of study – using a complexity-driven approach. We argue that complex countries need complex analyses and that this involves considering both the heterogeneity of the voluntary sector and volunteers’ experience (explanandum) and the plurality of background factors affecting them (explanans), as well as the methodological intricacy of their relations. We took a “variety hypothesis” as the starting reference: in complex countries, different antecedents might affect different types of volunteering and different characteristics of the volunteers’ experience. The relevance of social context, life course, status, and collective values for the access to and the level of commitment in different types of volunteering is thus examined. Multilevel analyses were carried out on the data from the first national implementation of the ILO standard in Italy. Overall, our results clearly confirm that a complexity-driven perspective is needed and support a moderate version of the “variety hypothesis.”