The influence of enthusiasm and personal constraints on the intention to continue volunteering in an uncertain and turbulent environment

This study aims to test an integrated model that explains volunteers’ intention to continue volunteering in an uncertain and turbulent environment such as the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that volunteers’ intention to continue is influenced by enthusiasm and personal constraints. Specifically, we assert that enthusiasm is influenced by intrinsic motivation, teamwork climate, and role ambiguity. Further, we propose the antecedents of personal constraints to be role ambiguity and perceived support. We conducted an online survey of potential respondents who were purposively sampled as active volunteers during COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 202 responses were complete and utilized for data analysis using a structural equation model. We found that enthusiasm has a positive influence on intention, while personal constraints has negative influence on intention. Further, we found that intrinsic motivation and teamwork climate positively influences enthusiasm, but enthusiasm is negatively influenced by role ambiguity. Similarly, personal constraints were found to be positively influenced by role ambiguity but negatively influenced by perceived support. The results of this study contribute to the discussion regarding the mechanism that increases volunteers’ intention to continue volunteering. Enthusiasm was found to be one of the factors, and its antecedents were empirically tested. In addition, the dual influences of role ambiguity imply the existence of two different paths to increase volunteers’ intention, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the formation of intention to continue volunteering. These findings provide insights and strategies on how to manage and retain volunteers for government and NPOs.