IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9649.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities

Author

Listed:
  • Baert, Stijn

    (Ghent University)

  • Vujic, Suncica

    (University of Antwerp)

Abstract

We investigate whether, why and when prosocial engagement has a causal effect on individual employment opportunities. To this end, a field experiment is conducted in which volunteering activities are randomly assigned to fictitious job applications sent to genuine vacancies. We find that volunteers get one third more interview invitations than non-volunteers. The volunteering premium is higher for females but invariant with respect to the number of engagements and the private versus public or nonprofit orientation of the job posting firm. As a result, our findings are consistent with the idea that prosocial workers sort themselves into non-commercial sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Baert, Stijn & Vujic, Suncica, 2016. "Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities," IZA Discussion Papers 9649, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9649
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9649.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stijn Baert & Bart Cockx & Niels Gheyle & Cora Vandamme, 2015. "Is There Less Discrimination in Occupations Where Recruitment Is Difficult?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 68(3), pages 467-500, May.
    2. Gregg, Paul & Grout, Paul A. & Ratcliffe, Anita & Smith, Sarah & Windmeijer, Frank, 2011. "How important is pro-social behaviour in the delivery of public services?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 758-766.
    3. Robert M. Sauer, 2015. "Does It Pay For Women To Volunteer?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(2), pages 537-564, May.
    4. Uysal, Selver Derya & Pohlmeier, Winfried, 2011. "Unemployment duration and personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 980-992.
    5. Robert M. Sauer, 2015. "Does It Pay For Women To Volunteer?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56, pages 537-564, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baert, Stijn & Vujić, Sunčica, 2016. "Immigrant volunteering: A way out of labour market discrimination?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 95-98.
    2. Dur, Robert & van Lent, Max, 2018. "Serving the public interest in several ways: Theory and empirics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 13-24.
    3. Piopiunik, Marc & Schwerdt, Guido & Simon, Lisa & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Skills, signals, and employability: An experimental investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    4. Bigoni, Maria & Ploner, Matteo & Vu, Thi-Thanh-Tam, 2023. "The right person for the right job: workers’ prosociality as a screening device," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 53-73.
    5. Sauer, Robert M. & Wilson, John & Mantovan, Noemi, 2019. "The Economic Benefits of Volunteering and Social Class," IZA Discussion Papers 12713, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Max van Lent, 2017. "Increasing the Well-Being of Others On-the-Job and Outside the Workplace," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 17-061/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    7. Betul Akar & Pelin Akyol & Cagla Okten, 2022. "Education and Voluntary Work: Evidence from Turkish Time Use Survey," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 275-320, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stijn Baert & Sunčica Vujić, 2018. "Does it pay to care? Volunteering and employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 819-836, July.
    2. Heinz, Matthias & Schumacher, Heiner, 2017. "Signaling cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 199-216.
    3. Jane Parry & Katherine Brookfield & Vicki Bolton, 2021. "“The long arm of the household”: Gendered struggles in combining paid work with social and civil participation over the lifecourse," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 361-378, January.
    4. Dolan, Paul & Krekel, Christian & Shreedhar, Ganga & Lee, Helen & Marshall, Claire & Smith, Allison, 2021. "Happy to help: the welfare effects of a nationwide micro-volunteering programme," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114387, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Thomas Zimmerfaust, 2018. "Are Workers Willing To Pay To Join A Better Team?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 1278-1295, April.
    6. Andrew T. Ching & Tülin Erdem & Michael P. Keane, 2017. "Empirical Models of Learning Dynamics: A Survey of Recent Developments," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Berend Wierenga & Ralf van der Lans (ed.), Handbook of Marketing Decision Models, edition 2, chapter 0, pages 223-257, Springer.
    7. Eva Van Belle & Ralf Caers & Marijke De Couck & Valentina Di Stasio & Stijn Baert, 2019. "The Signal of Applying for a Job Under a Vacancy Referral Scheme," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 251-274, April.
    8. Georganas, Sotiris & Laliotis, Ioannis & Velias, Alina, 2022. "The best is yet to come: The impact of retirement on prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 589-615.
    9. Guido Cozzi & Noemi Mantovan & Robert M. Sauer, 2017. "Does it Pay to Work for Free? Negative Selection and the Wage Returns to Volunteer Experience," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(6), pages 1018-1045, December.
    10. Dan Anderberg & Noemi Mantovan & Robert M Sauer, 2023. "The Dynamics of Domestic Violence: Learning about the Match," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(656), pages 2863-2898.
    11. Christian Belzil & Jorgen Hansen & Xingfei Liu, 2017. "Dynamic skill accumulation, education policies, and the return to schooling," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(3), pages 895-927, November.
    12. Zhu, Rong, 2021. "Retirement and voluntary work provision: Evidence from the Australian Age Pension reform," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 674-690.
    13. Jack Britton & Ben Waltmann, 2021. "Revisiting the solution of dynamic discrete choice models: time to bring back Keane and Wolpin (1994)?," IFS Working Papers W21/13, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    14. Alfonso-Costillo, Antonio & Morales-Sánchez, Rafael & López-Pintado, Dunia, 2021. "Does volunteering increase employment opportunities? An experimental approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    15. Femida Handy & Anthony Sealey, 2022. "Voluntary sector participation and individual health and welfare: Does it matter where?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(3), pages 471-493, May.
    16. Hyeon Park, 2023. "Giving and volunteering over a lifecycle," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 335-369, March.
    17. Akar, Betul & Akyol, Pelin & Okten, Cagla, 2019. "Education and Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from Time Use Survey," IZA Discussion Papers 12558, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Mao, Likun & Normand, Charles, 2022. "The effect of volunteering on employment: Evidence from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    19. Jens Detollenaere & Sara Willems & Stijn Baert, 2017. "Volunteering, income and health," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-11, March.
    20. Betul Akar & Pelin Akyol & Cagla Okten, 2022. "Education and Voluntary Work: Evidence from Turkish Time Use Survey," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 275-320, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    experiments; prosocial behaviour; labour market; volunteering; gender gaps; statistical discrimination; sorting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9649. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.