Conservation & Restoration Ecology
Who volunteers for the environment: towards a typology of conservation volunteers
Rick Rollins*, Angela Hunter, Rosaline Canessa
*Corresponding author: Rick Rollins
Vancouver Island University, , Canada
F1000Posters 2010, 1: 305 (poster) [ENGLISH]
Poster [521.81 KB]
Presented at
24th International Congress for Conservation Biology 2010 meeting,
3 - 7 Jul 2010, P1.29
Volunteers are increasingly important in many conservation based agencies and often work on projects where paid staff are not available. However high volunteer turnover can increase recruiting and training costs.
In order to improve retention rates and the effectiveness of volunteers, this study was aimed at better understanding the motivations of volunteers and what factors contribute to satisfaction.
Based on interviews with 148 active and inactive conservation volunteers, factor analysis of 35 motivation statements generated nine meaningful motivational factors. Similarly, factor analysis of 27 satisfaction statements generated 6 meaningful satisfaction factors. These results indicate that conservation volunteers vary in their motivations and satisfactions, and that retention requires that conservation agencies are aware of these factors and actively manage for volunteer satisfaction.
This research has been completed and forms part of an MA thesis at the University of Victoria.
No relevant conflicts of interest declared.
Please note that most posters on this site present work that is preliminary in nature and has not been peer reviewed.
This poster is open access subject to the CC BY-NC Creative Commons 3.0 License
