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Factors Influencing Sustained Voluntary Intention of Community Volunteers in a Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Xiaojie Zhang Open the ORCID record for Xiaojie Zhang [Opens in a new window] ,
Lili Wang  and
Xiaoyu Liu
Xiaojie Zhang*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration, School of Humanities and Law, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China
Lili Wang
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration, School of Humanities and Law, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China
Xiaoyu Liu
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration, School of Humanities and Law, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China
*
zhangxiaojie@mail.neu.edu.cn
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Abstract

In 2023, the World Health Organization declared the end of the public health emergency brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The sustained voluntary participation of community volunteers in the era after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency is of vital importance to community-level social governance and is one of the goals pursued by modern volunteer service. However, factors contributing to volunteers’ sustained voluntary behavior or intention have not been sufficiently investigated. This study examines the psychological determinants of volunteers’ sustained voluntary intention by constructing an expanded theory of commitment-trust. A dataset involving 507 respondents from Weihai city in China is developed. The empirical results based on a structural equation modeling analysis show that the comprehensive model explains 69% of the total variance in volunteers’ sustained voluntary intention. Volunteer trust is an important antecedent to activate other influencing factors, while community commitment has a directly positive effect on volunteers’ sustained voluntary intention. Volunteer satisfaction not only significantly affects volunteers’ sustained voluntary intention directly, but also impacts the dependent variable through community commitment indirectly. Besides, volunteer engagement has a significant positive effect on volunteers’ sustained intention through volunteer satisfaction. The results verify the applicability of the commitment-trust theory in the field of voluntary service and provide new perspectives for understanding the psychological mechanisms of volunteers’ sustained participation.

Keywords

Sustained voluntary intentionCommunity volunteerTheory of commitment-trustVolunteer satisfactionVolunteer engagementDeterminants

Information

Type
Research Paper
Information
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 2025 , pp. 217 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © International Society for Third-Sector Research 2024

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