Volunteering for nature conservation: motivations, benefits and attitude

Abstract

The growing numbers of environmental volunteers indicates that more and more citizens in Hong Kong are aware of environmental issues and willing to contribute their efforts to help protecting the environment. Previous studies indicated that environmental volunteering could raise environmental awareness and foster environmentally friendly behaviors among volunteers, given that they volunteered long and frequent enough. In addition, environmental volunteers are driven by different motivations to obtain certain benefits from their engagement. Therefore, understanding these motivations is essential to the design and management of volunteering programs. However, information about the motivations and attitude of environmental volunteering, especially in Hong Kong, is very limited. In order to provide an insight of the issue, this study assessed the motivations and benefits of environmental volunteers in Hong Kong. On top of this, the attitude of volunteers towards the environment was also examined to reveal its relationship with duration and frequency of volunteering. View points from volunteer managers were also gathered to obtain a better understanding of the issues. Information and data was collected from 205 local environmental volunteers and 5 volunteer managers through questionnaire survey and focused interviews. The results of the study revealed that interest in nature and learning are the most important motivations for volunteers, while social factor becomes more important with ongoing engagement. Learning is an important element in volunteering experience due to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills which are beneficial to personal development of the volunteers. Therefore, outdoor experience in nature and training opportunities should be included in the volunteering program, and the establishment of social network among volunteers should also be facilitated, to raise the satisfactory level and foster the sense of belonging of the volunteers. The results also indicated that longer term volunteering and higher frequency of service fostered better environmental awareness and more frequent conformation to environmentally friendly behaviors. Therefore, retaining volunteers and encouraging frequent participation not only ensure stable manpower supply for green groups, but also help the environment by changing people’s behaviors. In other words, environmental volunteering is not only an instrument to acquire work force, it also serves educational functions to change the mindset of volunteers, if the volunteering program is well managed. In order to achieve this, the factors contributing to the participation of volunteers should be realized, and the results of this study can assist environmental managers to establish volunteering programs addressing the motivations and benefits of volunteers which best suit the situation in Hong Kong. This is beneficial to the development and popularization of environmental conservation in Hong Kong.