IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pab/wpaper/20.08.html

Does volunteering increase employment opportunities? An experimental approach

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Alfonso-Costillo

    (Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide;)

  • Rafael Morales-Sánchez

    (Department of Business Organization and Marketing, Universidad Pablo de Olavide;)

  • Dunia López-Pintado

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

We study the benefits of doing volunteer work when seeking employment opportunities. We do so by sending 2000 fictitious curricula to a large online platform of job offers in the United States. Half of these curricula are randomly assigned volunteer activities. We find that people who do volunteer work receive 45 percent more callbacks for interviews. The volunteering premium is not uniform across economic sectors. In retailing and real estate, it is significant, whereas in the other sectors we have studied (animal service, technology and automobile) it is not.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Alfonso-Costillo & Rafael Morales-Sánchez & Dunia López-Pintado, 2020. "Does volunteering increase employment opportunities? An experimental approach," Working Papers 20.08, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pab:wpaper:20.08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wps/econ2008.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    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. Sauer, Robert M. & Wilson, John & Mantovan, Noemi, 2019. "The Economic Benefits of Volunteering and Social Class," IZA Discussion Papers 12713, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Peter A. Riach & Judith Rich, 2004. "Deceptive Field Experiments of Discrimination: Are they Ethical?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 457-470, August.
    4. Damian Clarke & Joseph P. Romano & Michael Wolf, 2020. "The Romano–Wolf multiple-hypothesis correction in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 20(4), pages 812-843, December.
    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(2), pages 537-564, May.
    6. 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.
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    8. 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)

    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. 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.
    3. Baert, Stijn & Picchio, Matteo, 2021. "A signal of (Train)ability? Grade repetition and hiring chances," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 867-878.
    4. Ali M. Ahmed & Elisabeth Lång, 2017. "The employability of ex-offenders: a field experiment in the Swedish labor market," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-23, December.
    5. Krekel, Christian & Shreedhar, Ganga & Lee, Helen & Marshall, Claire & Boler, Alison & Smith, Allison & Dolan, Paul, 2024. "Happy to help: welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126209, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. 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," IZA Discussion Papers 14431, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Jens Detollenaere & Sara Willems & Stijn Baert, 2017. "Volunteering, income and health," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-11, March.
    8. Button, Patrick & Walker, Brigham, 2020. "Employment discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    9. Heinz, Matthias & Schumacher, Heiner, 2017. "Signaling cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 199-216.
    10. 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.
    11. Baert, By Stijn & Neyt, Brecht & Siedler, Thomas & Tobback, Ilse & Verhaest, Dieter, 2021. "Student internships and employment opportunities after graduation: A field experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. 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.
    13. Stefan Eriksson & Per Johansson & Sophie Langenskiöld, 2017. "What is the right profile for getting a job? A stated choice experiment of the recruitment process," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 803-826, September.
    14. repec:osf:socarx:e5hfc_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Armantier, Olivier & Boly, Amadou, 2011. "A controlled field experiment on corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1072-1082.
    16. 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.
    17. Baker, Rachel & Dee, Thomas & Evans, Brent & John, June, 2022. "Bias in online classes: Evidence from a field experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    18. Shtudiner, Zeev & Siniver, Erez & Tobol, Yossef & Yaniv, Gideon, 2024. "Female attractiveness engenders honesty among men but dishonesty among women," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 592-598.
    19. 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.
    20. Stijn Baert & Olivier Rotsaert & Dieter Verhaest & Eddy Omey, 2016. "Student Employment and Later Labour Market Success: No Evidence for Higher Employment Chances," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 401-425, August.
    21. Baert, Stijn & Vujic, Suncica, 2016. "Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities," IZA Discussion Papers 9649, IZA Network @ LISER.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    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:pab:wpaper:20.08. 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: Publicación Digital - UPO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupoes.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.