Volunteering motives and personal well being evidence from vietnam

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Lai Nguyen Minh Hung

Volunteering Motives
and Personal Well-being:
Evidence from Vietnam

MASTER OF BUSINESS

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016


UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Lai Nguyen Minh Hung

Volunteering Motives
and Personal Well-being:
Evidence from Vietnam
ID: 22140019

MASTER OF BUSINESS
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016

Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................. 2
1. Research background ...................................................................................... 3
2. Literature reviews ........................................................................................... 8
2.1.

Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being ................................... 9

2.2. Moderating role of personality traits on relationship between
Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being............................................. 15
3. Methodology ................................................................................................. 19
3.1.

Design and Samples ............................................................................ 19

3.2.

Samples description............................................................................. 22

3.3.

Measurement ....................................................................................... 22

4. Data analysis and results ............................................................................... 23
4.1.

Volunteering Motives analysis ............................................................ 23

4.2.

Final measurement model ................................................................... 24

5. Discussion ..................................................................................................... 27
5.1.

Implications for volunteering leaders ................................................. 28

5.2.

Limitations and further research ......................................................... 29

References ........................................................................................................... 31
Supported Information ........................................................................................ 41
A: Questionnaire Vietnamese ......................................................................... 41
B: Questionnaire English ................................................................................ 45
C: Tables and Figures ..................................................................................... 48

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Abstract

This study investigates the impact Volunteering Motives on Personal Wellbeing of Volunteers in Hochiminh, Vietnam. The result of this paper will support
volunteering clubs to maintain a good volunteering environment by applying these
volunteering motives to their organizations. Structural equation modeling was
employed to test the impact, using the sample of 313 volunteers from volunteering
clubs around Hochiminh city. The result show that Volunteering Motives has positive
impact on the Personal Well-being of volunteers. Furthermore, this study also aims at

investigating the moderating effect of Personality traits on the relationship between
Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being. The result indicates that the impact of
Volunteering Motives on Personal Well-being is not different in terms of Neuroticism,
Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. Nevertheless, differences appear in Extraversion
and Openness group . Based on this consequence, volunteering clubs could adjust
their organization to foster these motives to maintain and attract skilled volunteers.

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1. Research background
The motivation of people to volunteer has long fascinated in academic
researches (Reeder, Davison, Gipson, & Hesson-McInnis, 2001; Rehberg, 2005).
Understanding the underlying motivational concerns of those who volunteer has been
a topic occupying much of the literature related to volunteering (Boz & Palaz, 2007;
Mannino, Snyder & Omoto, 2011). What actually motivates a person to volunteer is a
complex and contrary argument, some people suppose that individuals doing
volunteering because they want to develop themselves and learn experiences (Clary &
Snyder, 1999; Hallmann & Harms, 2012; Gage & Thapa, 2012), others contend that
people are motivated to volunteer by their altruistic motives and self-interest (Sherer,
2004; Rehberg, 2005; Geiser, Okun, & Grano, 2014) . Understanding these
motivations can be the great assistance to organizations in attracting and retaining
volunteers. Firstly, organizations can use information on motivations to attract
potential volunteers by tailoring recruitment messages to closely match their
motivational needs. Secondly, in assessing the motivational needs of new volunteers,
organizations can ensure effective placement of volunteers into activities that meet
their expectations. Thirdly, by understanding their volunteers’ motives, organizations
can seek to maintain volunteer satisfaction by ensuring these motivations are fulfilled.
Recently, volunteering has played more and more important roles in business,
society and community (Faulkner & Davies, 2005; Prabhu, Hanley & Kearney, 2008).

Considering business aspect, entrepreneur supposes that corporate volunteering is
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Do Paco & Cláudia Nave, 2013). In Vietnam,
especially Hochiminh city, there are some kinds of volunteering organizations

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established and operating recently such as Vi Cong Dong volunteering club
(www.vicongdong.vn) or Net But Xanh volunteering club (www.netbutxanh.com),
both are non-profit organizations (NPO). Beside, many companies have their
corporate social responsibility (CSR) division such as Vinamilk, FPT, Vina Capital
(Dinh Dung, 2012). In general, CSR becomes a prevailing term in recent years, it is
defined by four components layouted into a pyramid. The bottom of this pyramid is
economic responsibilities, business needs to earn the profit firstly. The upper one is
legal responsibilities, business has to obey the law and related-obligations. The higher
one is ethical responsibilities; it embodies standards, norms, expectations that reflect
concerns for what consumers, employees, shareholders, community as fair. The top
one of this pyramid is philanthropic responsibilities, it encompasses corporate actions
that are in response to society’s expectation to help business be good corporate
citizens (Caroll, 1991). Considering society and community aspect, if we type word
“volunteering” on Google, we could easily find some information related to this key
word. The need and the role of volunteering are increased significantly due to the
social, medical, economic problems and the changes of environment, climate.
Particularly, in 2014, Vietnam collected 1,054 million blood units, this number only
served 58% the demand of blood and surprisingly 92% of these blood units received
were provided by volunteering activities (Huynh Hai, 2015; Minh Duc, 2015).
Weekly, monthly, on the internet, we could read at least several newspapers writing
about volunteers providing food and beverage for homeless or miserable people
(Phuong Trang, 2016). Occasionally, we meet volunteers working at traffic lights or
appearing at the hot spots of traffic jams under the bad weather in Vietnam (Nhu Lich,

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Hoang Phan & Trieu Duong, 2014). Annually, in July, a lot of students from different
universities in Hochiminh City spend their time on helping Grade-12 students on final
exam-to-University or College (Thuan Giang, 2015). Moreover, when it comes to
rainy season or dry season, the center of Vietnam often faces a lot of bad weather,
disaster, drought, flood and storm. However, many young people are volunteering to
fight with the nature and help others to overcome this worse circumstance (Quynh
Anh, 2016). And most of them are unpaid volunteers.
Our questions are why rational people devote their valuable time for stressful
and much responsible works in difficult situation, difficult weather, day and night?
What motives encouraging people to undertake these hard responsibilities and keep
them stay with volunteering works? Why young people accept to sacrifice many hours
a week taking part in potentially dangerous job without any payment? What factors
appeal volunteers to participate in volunteering clubs or keep them on the unpaid job?
Why some volunteers are satisfied with volunteering jobs and devote their spare time
to work for volunteering activities. We strongly believe that understanding these
motives help organizations increase the satisfaction for sustained volunteers. Several
researches supposed that volunteers start their volunteering work because of some
motives such as: they want to help difficult people, they want to learn skills and
experience, they expect the identity in community, they want to extent their
relationship or improve their career (Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen
& Meine, 1998; Clary & Snyder, 1999). Furthermore, they continue their volunteering
work if their motives are fulfilled (Grant, 2012; Lester, Tomkovick, Wells, Flunker &
Kickul, 2005; Clary et al.,1998). Grant (2012) has raised an idea that sustained

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volunteering is driven by the satisfaction of their motives, however, this scholar did
not focus particularly on the relationship between motives and Personal Well-being.
Clary et al. (1998) indicated the relationship between motives and satisfaction, but
they have passed the role of Personal Well-being. Veerasamy, Sambasivan, and
Kumar (2015) has underlined the significant impact of motives on Personal Wellbeing, however, in this study, motives and Personal Well-being plays the role of
independent variables instead of dependent variables. Actually, despite these factors
are very important to attract and develop volunteering forces, not many researches
have been conducted to investigate the relationship between these motives and
Personal Well-being of volunteers in Hochiminh City, Vietnam. Besides the study of
the volunteering ‘s motives, in this study, we would like to understand about the
volunteers’ personality traits. Volunteers often encounter with stressful unpaid job and
several jobs are very dangerous (Duc Hung, 2016). In some cases, the working
condition is difficult for them (Nguyen Hong Quan, 2015). It raises a question that
whether there are any outstanding personality traits in volunteers that could help them
overcome these difficulties and how these personality traits affect their Personal Wellbeing. There are several researches studying about personality traits of individuals,
some traits are listed such as: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism,
Conscientiousness, Agreeableness (John, Naumann & Soto, 2008; Rammstedt & John,
2007). However, these factors are applied to whole and general individuals not
particular people working in volunteering field. Veerasamy et al. (2015) has studied
about the relationship between personality traits as independent variables and life
satisfaction as dependent variable, however, they did not mention the role of

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personality traits as moderators. Furthermore, their research was surveyed based on
health care volunteers working in Malaysia – a developed country not a developing
nation as Vietnam. Therefore, in this paper, we study the effect of personality traits on
the relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.

John, Naumann, and Soto (2008) conducted a study to identify what are the
main personality traits of an individual. In this study, they have shown the big five
personality traits: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism,
Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. A study supposed some factors keep volunteers on
their unpaid jobs that are Values, Understanding, Social, Career, Protective,
Enhancement (Clary & Snyder, 1999). Smith (1994) supposed that volunteers are not
totally generous, therefore, “Desire to Help Others” is not actually main motivated
factor for developing and maintaining volunteering programs. He believes that
volunteering has positive relation with costs and benefits. Fletcher and Major (2004)
and Fisher and Ackerman (1998) supposed that people want to help others due to
some reason such as: purposeful, selfless, and humanitarian motives; self-interest,
such as accumulating career-related experience; social objectives, like pro-social
behaviors, social-role enhancement, and social role recognition. This article attempts
to identify what kinds of typical characteristic found in volunteers, which factors
affecting volunteers’ Personal Well-being. Therefore, this study examines the
relationship between these Volunteering motives and volunteers’ Personal Well-being.

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The objectives of this study to:
- investigate the impact of Volunteering Motives on Personal Well-being of
volunteers, and then examine the moderating effects of Personality Traits on
relationship between Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.
The contribution of this article is to support profit and non-profit organizations
and foster these factors in their volunteering activities to attract, maintain and increase
the number of volunteers in Hochiminh City and other locations which have few
volunteering organizations but demand for volunteering is very high. According to
Thoits and Hewitt (2001), people who have great well-being tend to spend more time
in volunteering, it represents the relation between well-being and intention to involve

in volunteering activities. Furthermore, this study shows some typical personality
traits of volunteers and this helps volunteering organizations identify and recruit
proper volunteers for their volunteering projects.
2. Literature reviews
This study proposes that Volunteering Motives (M) has a positive effect on
Personal Well-being (PWB). Further, it also posits that Personality Traits such as
Openness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness play the role
of moderators. Figure 1 supposes a conceptual model for this relationship.

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H1

Personal Wellbeing (PWB)

Volunteering
Motives
H2

H3

H4

H5

H6

Openness
Extraversion

Neuroticism
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness

Figure 1. Conceptual model
2.1. Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being
Personal Well-being (PWB) or Subjective Well-being (SWB) or Well-Being
(WB) is the term to describe how people experience the living quality encompassing
emotional reactions and cognitive judgments (Diener, 1984). Diener, Lucas, and Oishi
(2002) define Subjective Well-being as a person’s cognitive and affective evaluations
of his or her life, these evaluations comprise emotional reaction as well as cognitive
judgements of satisfaction and fulfilment. The cognitive component refers to what one
thinks about his or her Well-being in global terms (life as a whole) and in domain
terms (in specific areas of life such as work, relationships, health, living conditions,
etc.). The affective component refers to emotions, moods and feelings. Affect is
considered positive when the emotions, moods and feelings experienced are pleasant
(e.g. joy, elation, affection etc.) Affect is deemed negative, though, when the
emotions, moods and feelings experienced are unpleasant (e.g. guilt, anger, shame
etc.). Subjective Well-being is broad concept related to experience of pleasant

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emotion, low level of negative emotion and high life satisfaction. In this paper, we
apply the concept of Personal Well-being borrowed from International Well-being
Group (2013) to measure the Well-being of volunteers. Personal Well-being is one
approach of Subjective Well-being. According to International Well-being Group
(2013), there are two approaches to Subjective Well-being: single construct scale and
life domain scale. Firstly, in single construct scale, this approach consists of multiple
items, each item measures directly to global life satisfaction and the individual items

are not intended to have separate meaning within Subjective Well-being construct.
Furthermore, this approach focuses on the personal emotion, subjective judgement
(Pavot, Diener, Colvin & Sandvik, 1991). Secondly, in life domain scale, this
approach reaches domain-level of global life satisfaction, each item measures specific
life domains (life aspects) of Subjective Well-being. Several studies have adopted this
approach such as International Well-being Group (2013) with Personal Well-being
Index and the domains of life satisfaction (Cummins, 1996). Personal Well-being
Index follows second approach of Subjective Well-being, it is people’s evaluation of
their life, Personal Well-being has a covering meaning on several domains of one’s
life (International Well-being Group, 2013). However, when all life’s aspects are
aligned together, Personal Well-being is same as Subjective Well-being, the overall
appraisal of people’s life (Mellor, Hayashi, Stokes, Firth, Lake, Staples & Cummins,
2009). International Well-being Group (2013) has shown seven items to measure
Personal Well-being of individuals including seven domains standard of living, health,
achieving in life, relationship, safety, connection to community and future security.

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Well-being is subjective and personal because people evaluate themselves by what
they experience sense of wellness (Deci & Ryan, 2008).
Volunteers continue their volunteering works and tend to devote more hours to
volunteering when they are satisfied with the experience of fulfilling their motives
(Finkelstein, 2008; Grant, 2012; Lester, Tomkovick, Wells, Flunker & Kickul, 2005).
Fulfilment of volunteering motives is supposed to affect Personal well-being of
volunteering (Finkelstein, Penner & Brannick,2005). Clary et al. (1998) believe that
volunteers who are fulfilled their primary motivational functions have high possibility
to carry on volunteering activities. Several researches have indicated that life
satisfaction is one of the benefits of volunteering (Grant, 2012). There is a study
which has shown that motives of volunteering have a significant impact on well-being

and age plays a significant moderating role on this relationship (Ho, You & Fung,
2012). Another study indicates that older people who volunteer and spend more hours
of volunteering enjoy higher levels of Well-being (Morrow-Howell, Hinterlong,
Rozario & Tang, 2003). Gnoth (1997) has defined motives are: “A motive is a lasting
disposition. Each motive has its distinct type of contents in the form of goals of
behavior. Contents here means that a person chooses from a repertoire of learned or
conceived actions, while the goals refer to the consequences of one’s actions”.
Motivations play an important role in determining people’s choices, decisions and
action from whom people choose to eat with to decisions related to their jobs.
Motivations in form of needs, goals, purposes and plans can both foster and hinder
future. Motivations are critical in understanding why and how people make decisions
and involve in actions (Mannino, Snyder & Omoto, 2011). Boz and Palaz (2007)

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stated that the most important motivational factors for volunteering were
altruism, affiliation, and personal improvement. Volunteering Motives consist of
six components including Value, Understanding, Enhancement, Career, Social,
Protective (Clary & Snyder, 1999). This research also indicates the consistency of six
function with responses collected. Veerasamy et al. (2015) supposed that life
satisfaction of volunteers is affected by some volunteering motives: value,
understanding, career, protective, enhancement and social. This study has shown the
strong relationship between Volunteering Motives and Life Satisfaction. However,
Life Satisfaction often mentions few aspects of Well-Being, it is related to how people
feel about their life in general. It appears with following statements: “In most ways
my life is close to my idea”, “The conditions of my life are excellent”, “I am satisfied
with my life”, “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life”, “If I could live
my life over, I would change almost nothing” (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin,
1985). According to Diener (1984), life satisfaction depends on the comparison of

one’s overall quality of life with standard which is set by himself or herself.
Therefore, in this study, we would like to measure well-being in particular aspects of
one’s life borrowed from International Well-being Group (2013) such as: “standard of
living”, “health”, “achievement in life”, “personal relationship”, “safety in life”, “Be a
part of community”, “future security” which were investigated and used by an
International Group. In this research, we test the impact of Volunteering Motives on
Personal Well-being of volunteers and relationship between Motives and Personal
Well-being under the effect of Personality Traits. Here, Volunteering Motives
explained:

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Value. The individual volunteers express or act on important values like
humanitarianism (Clary & Snyder, 1999). Particularly, the opportunities that
volunteering provides for individuals to show their values related to altruistic and
humanitarian concerns (Clary et al., 1998). Altruism is considered to motivate
individuals who focus on the population when they volunteer. It reflects the time,
money, and energy that an individual devotes for the benefit of society at large (Boz &
Palaz, 2007). Altruistic motives, such as “the need to give to others, the need to feel
that I’ve done something for the country, the homeland” which were reported
by 60% of the participants in a study related to volunteering conducted in Israel
(Sherer, 2004) . This was the main stated source of motivation for service. Previous
studies contend that value is one of strongest motives for volunteering which reflects
helping others and show one’s own perspective on an issue (Hallmann & Harms,
2012; Gage & Thapa, 2012).
Enhancement. People may be voluntary for their personal growth, they participate in
volunteering activities because of their ego (Clary et al., 1998). Boz and Palaz (2007)
has indicated that volunteers gain their personal improvement when they help people
and volunteers feel that they are increasing self-confidence. A study supposed that

individuals can grow and develop psychologically through volunteering activities
(Clary & Snyder, 1999). According to Hallmann and Harms (2012), personal growth
has the great influence in explaining volunteer’s motives. For example, feedback and
evaluation opportunities during volunteering participation should be easily accessible
for the volunteers to acknowledge their work and give the opportunity for personal
growth.

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Social. Volunteering allows people to extent their social relationship (Clary & Snyder,
1999). Volunteers tend to participate in volunteering activity if they find their
important people involved in (Clary et al., 1998). The results of a study proposes that
parents and friends have the greatest impact on the decision to serve in volunteering
service. This study underlines the fact that the social surrounding determines motives
and the decision to volunteer. Consequently, families and friends should become the
target system of intervention to raise voluntarism among young people (Sherer, 2004).
For example, if they have their friends or people they know are volunteers, especial
their close friends, best friends or relatives, they tend to participate in those
organizations. In addition, volunteering help them to strengthen their social
relationship and it contributes incrementally to task-focused volunteering (Finkelstein
& Brannick, 2007).
Career. This concept mentions about the career-related benefits when volunteers
involve in social activities (Clary et al., 1998). Particularly, volunteers have the
purpose of achieving career-related experience by doing volunteering activities (Clary
& Snyder, 1999). Volunteers want to experience different kinds of project to explore
their potential. Furthermore, this is a good way to collect contacts to expand their
business or career.
Protective. The volunteers take advantage of volunteering to reduce negative
emotion, negative feeling such as guilt or to handle their problems (Clary & Snyder,

1999). This function is associated with the ego of volunteers (Clary et al., 1998).
Volunteering supports volunteers to overcome their personal problem. Furthermore, it
helps them to be less lonely in their life.

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Understanding. This motive is related to the opportunities of learning new
experiences and the chances to practice their knowledge, skills. Volunteers expect to
receive benefit related for their development by doing volunteering activities (Clary et
al., 1998; Clary & Snyder, 1999). Gage and Thapa (2012) has supposed that
understanding is one of strongest motives for volunteering which reflects helping
others and show one’s own perspective on an issue.
H1: There is positive relationship between the Volunteering Motives and Personal
Well-being of volunteers.
2.2. Moderating role of personality traits on relationship between Volunteering
Motives and Personal Well-being
People with different personality traits experience different levels of subjective
well-being (Soto, 2015; Gutiérrez, Jiménez, Hernández & Pcn, 2005). Particularly, in
terms of the Big Five traits such as Openness to Experience, Extraversion,
Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness individuals who are more
extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable tend to enjoy greater
satisfaction with life, more frequent positive affect, and less frequent negative affect
(Steel, Schmidt & Shultz, 2008). Soto (2015) indicates the relationship between four
traits of big five personality traits and Well-being, he shows that higher levels of
subjective Well-being is in line with higher levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness and with lower levels of Neuroticism. Soto (2015) also supposes
that personality traits predict the change in the Well-being, they support the
hypothesis that personality traits and well-being aspects reciprocally influence each
other over time. Furthermore, Joshanloo and Afshari (2009) also mention about the

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relationship between personality traits and life satisfaction. Grant, Langan-Fox, and
Anglim (2009) believe that three factors as extraversion, neuroticism, and
conscientiousness have particular relationship with the Well-being. Regression
Analysis of Gutiérrez, Jiménez, Hernández, and Pcn (2005) showed that personality
is the most important correlates to Well-being, especially, Extraversion and
Neuroticism. Another study has indicated that personality traits account for important
role in determining level of Subjective Well-being, there is support for strong direct
and indirect relationships between personality traits and subjective Well-being (Steel,
Schmidt & Shultz , 2008). Personality may help create an influence on subjective
Well-being. The finding in this area is the link between Sociability, a facet of
Extraversion and positive affect (Eid, Riemann, Angleitner & Borkenau, 2003). In this
study, we use theory of John et al. (2008) about big five personality traits to measure
the personality. Nevertheless, because of limited time in the survey, we have used the
version with 16 items in the survey (Olsen, Tudoran, Honkanen & Verplanken, 2016).
The big five personality traits are Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism,
Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. Based on the previous researches, we form
hypothesis for the effect of volunteers’ personality traits on the relationship between
Volunteering Motives and Personal Well-being.
Openness to Experience. It mentions about the breadth, depth, originality and
complexity of people’s mental and experiential life. This concept is clarified by action
taking the time to obtain something for the joy of studying. People seek for
stimulating activities to break up their routine. People with high openness are be better
at creative activities or job, they are proper for artistic job and often have distinctive-

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looking work. People with low openness have conservative attitude (John et al., 2008).
There are several adjectives for this factor: creative, intellectual, simple, imaginative,
philosophical, deep, uncreative, unintellectual (Thompson, 2008). Openness to
Experience has a positive effect on quality of life and people with higher openness
tends to be happier overtime (Schmidt & Shultz, 2008; Soto, 2015).
H2: The impact of volunteering motives on personal well-being is stronger for high
openness to experience than low openness to experience.
Extraversion. It mentions about the energy, enthusiasm. It indicates an energetic
approach toward the social and material world, it can be described by some words
such as sociability, activity, assertiveness, positive emotionality. Some example
actions related to extraversion are taking the lead in organizing a project, or
proactively approaching the strangers at a party and introduce themselves. People with
high extraversion have social status in group and often take leadership positions, they
have positive emotion and have a lot of friends. People with low extraversion have
less relationships with family, less friends (John et al., 2008). There are several
adjectives for this factor: shy, talkative, energetic, quiet, extraverted, outgoing,
reserved, un-talkative (Thompson, 2008). Extraversion is considered a strong positive
predictor for happiness and quality of life (Steel, Schmidt & Shultz, 2008). High level
of extraversion is considered a factor to predict the increase in well-being (Soto,
2015).
H3: The impact of volunteering motives on personal well-being is stronger for high
extraversion than low extraversion.

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Neuroticism. It is related to negative emotion, nervousness, anxiety, sadness. It is
contrast with emotional stability. Some samples action go along with neuroticism are
to agree with the good and the bad in my life without any complaints. People get upset

when somebody angry with them. People with high neuroticism are weak at coping
something and have weak responses to the illness. People with low neuroticism
commit to work organizations, good relationship and satisfaction (John et al., 2008).
There are several words describing this factor: emotional stability, envious, carefree,
fretful, jealous, easy-going, moody, emotional, unenvious (Thompson, 2008). A study
has supposed that neuroticism is clearly the strongest predictor well-being, it has a
negative effect on happiness and quality of life (Steel, Schmidt & Shultz, 2008). Low
level of neuroticism predicts the subsequent increases in well-being (Soto, 2015).
H4: The impact of volunteering motives on personal well-being is stronger for low
neuroticism than high neuroticism.
Conscientiousness. It is related to constraint and control of impulse. It is described
that people facilitate task and objective-directed behavior, they always think before
acting, they comply with norm and regulations, well planning or organizing,
prioritizing tasks. Typical actions for conscientiousness are to be always on time for
appointment, always double-check documents. They try to get the highest grade in
study. People with high conscientiousness have better performance in work, they have
longer lives due to always adhere to the instruction of doctors. People with low
conscientiousness have poor diet, tend to abuse bad substance like alcohol, smoking
and they are disorder in work (John et al., 2008). There are some words related to this
term: efficient, disorganized, careless, untidy, practical, inefficient, systematic,

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organized (Thompson, 2008). Conscientiousness is a strong predictor for quality of
life with positive effect (Steel, Schmidt & Shultz, 2008). Soto (2015) supposes that
higher conscientiousness leads to higher life satisfaction and positive effect.
H5: The impact of volunteering motives on personal well-being is stronger for
high conscientiousness than low conscientiousness.
Agreeableness. It comes with these words such as altruism and affection. They have

some straits such as altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, modesty. Some typical actions
like they tend to focus on the good qualities of other people, they often lend things to
people they know and motivate friends if they are upset. People with high
agreeableness have better performance in work groups. People with low agreeableness
have interpersonal problem (John et al., 2008). Some adjectives mention about this
term: cold, sympathetic, harsh, cooperative, kind, warm, rude and unsympathetic
(Thompson, 2008). Soto (2015) has showed that people with more agreeable tend to
experience higher life satisfaction, more frequent positive effect. Moreover, change
correlations indicate that increases and decreases on these same traits are associated
with parallel changes in well-being.
H6: The impact of volunteering motives on personal well-being is stronger for high
agreeableness than low agreeableness.
3. Methodology
3.1. Design and Samples
The research consists of two phases, a pilot study and a main survey. The pilot
study was a qualitative research and the main survey is quantitative research. Both
stages were conducted in Ho Chi Minh City, the principal center of economy, culture,

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tourist, science and education in Vietnam. Hochiminh was a dynamic City which had
many volunteers working in volunteering clubs, profit and non-profit organizations
(Tuthien, 2014; Thanh Hoa, 2015; Thanh Long, 2016). These volunteers come from
different places in Vietnam with different backgrounds.
This pilot study – qualitative research was carried out in the first two weeks of
June, 2016. In this period, many volunteering organizations were planning for “Green
summer campaign” (Linh, 2015) and “Tiep suc mua thi” (Nguyen Nhu, Le Thanh &
Hoai Nhon, 2015). Therefore, it was easy for us to in-depth interview. In this stage,
we interviewed ten volunteers who had some years working in volunteering. In-depth

interview was carried out in this stage with the purposes of refining and modifying
research’s items in the questionnaire. Although constructs had been mentioned in
literature reviews, we would like to know how the interviewees describe these
constructs. Interviewees were asked questions related to their characteristics and
motives affecting their satisfaction in doing volunteering works (see Appendix A for
In-depth Interview Questionnaire). In this stage, we also introduced our questionnaire
to interviewees. Questionnaire was translated from English version into Vietnamese
version by an academic fluent team in both languages.
The main survey - quantitative research (see Appendix B for Questionnaire)
was conducted from the last week of June 2016, after the qualitative research and one
week of consolidating the questionnaire. Target interviewees for this stage were
volunteers who were working profit and non-profit organizations in Hochiminh City
and most of them are part-time volunteers. We applied convenient sampling strategy
to these volunteers, they were recruited from some organizations that are: Ket Noi

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Trai Tim (www.ketnoitraitim.vicongdong.vn), Chung tay Vi Cong Dong
(www.chungtay.vicongdong.vn) and some profit and non-profit organizations. The
reason why we chose these organizations because they had a certain time working in
volunteering and had a particular contribution to the community. Therefore, it is
appropriate for us to interview and sent the questionnaires. To have more responses,
we collect data via many channels such as e-mail, social network, phone interview and
face to face interview. In term of regression the minimum sample size needed for
testing the overall model has to fall between five and ten times of total independent
variables (Hair, Black, Babin & Anderson, 2010). In this study, we collected 313
observations because we have fifty three items on the model. According to Grant
(2012) and Lester et al. (2005), volunteers tend to continue their volunteering jobs if
they are fulfilled with experiences from the jobs. Therefore, one screening question

was put at the beginning of the questionnaire to help identify valid respondents: (1)
whether respondents have worked any volunteering jobs in their life. If respondents
choose Yes for the first question, respondents are considered as valid and they are
asked to finish the questionnaire. In case of the No answer received for the first
question, respondents are asked to stop completing the questionnaire and are delivered
‘Thank you’ message. The second part of the questionnaire included separate sections
for each construct: Motives, Personality traits, Personal Well-being. Final part of
questionnaire was the questions related to demographic questions on gender, age,
income, time volunteering, education, jobs.
In order to minimize possible response bias, instruction also emphasized that
the study only focuses on the respondents’ personal opinions. There was no right or

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wrong answer. After completing the questionnaire, interviewers were responsible for
checking and collecting it.
3.2. Samples description

Job:
Students: 62.3%
Office staff: 28.1%
Worker: 1.3%
Manager: 0.6%
Other: 7.3%

Sex:
Male: 37.1%
Female: 62.9%

Volunteering Organizations:
Company: 20%
NGO/NPO: 24%
Volunteering Club: 91%

Age:
18-25: 95.5%
26-35: 3.5%
36-45: 0.3%
More than 45: 0.6%

Volunteering Participation:
<5 times per year (58.1%)
5 – 9 times per year (33.2%)
10 – 14 times per year (5.4%)
15 – 20 times per year (1.3%)
>20 times (1.9%)

Income (monthly):
<3,000,000VND: 54.3%
3-4,999,999: 12.5%
5-7,999,999: 11.5%
8-9,999,999: 11.2%
>10,000,000: 10.5%

Figure 2. Sample description
3.3. Measurement
This study examined three constructs. Firstly, Volunteers’ Personality Traits (P)
which were measured by five components: Openness to Experience, Extraversion,
Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness with 7-point likert scale ranging from

1-Strongly Disagree to 7-Strongly Agree (Olsen et al, 2016). Secondly, Volunteering
Motives (M) which were conceptualized as a second-order construct with six
components: Value, Enhancement, Social, Career, Protective, Understanding. All
items of motives were measured by 5-point likert scale with 1-Strongly Disagree to 5Strongly Agree (Clary & Snyder, 1999). Secondly, Personal Well-being represented
by seven items (International Well-being Group, 2013) with the 11-points likert scale
from 1-No satisfaction at all and 10-Completely Satisfied. Volunteers’ Personality
Traits (P) had five components: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Neuroticism,

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Conscientiousness, Agreeableness. Each component had two items (Olsen et al., 2016)
and “R” denotes Reversed-score. Volunteers’ Motives (M) have six components:
Value (5 items), Enhancement (5 items), Social (5 items), Career (5 items), Protective
(5 items), Understanding (5 items). Personal Well-being (see Table 1).
4. Data analysis and results
Cronbach’s alpha was were used to refine measures of constructs based on data
collected from the survey. The Cronbach’s alphas of Value, Enhancement, Social,
Career, Protective, Understanding, Personal Well-being were 0.848, 0.690, 0.835,
0.858, 0.854, 0.892, 0.826 respectively. One item measuring Enhancement was
deleted due to low item-total correlation (<0.3). These Cronbach’s alphas are greater
than 0.8 and only one construct is greater than 0.6 indicating the reliability of the scale
and internal consistency within factor (Peterson, 1994). These scales were then
assessed via CFA using data set (313 responses) collected in main survey. Firstly,
CFA was used to assessed the second-order construct (Volunteering Motives). After
that, the rest construct of Personal Well-being was put into the first CFA model to
form final measurement model.
4.1. Volunteering Motives analysis
Volunteering Motives was a second-order construct consisting of six factors:
Value, Enhancement, Social, Career, Protective, Understand. The CFA showed that

measurement model of Volunteering Motives receiving an acceptable fit with: Chisquare (217) = 416.598, Chi-square/df = 1.920, CFI = 0.947, GFI = 0.900, TLI =
0.938, RMR = 0.067, RMSEA = 0.054 (P-close = 0.180). However, several items
which low factor loading (<0.5) and high standardized residual (>|2.58|) were deleted

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