An Investigation into Volunteer Motivation and Satisfaction: A Case Study of the 2017 Festival City Volunteers

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the motivational factors and satisfaction levels of event volunteers, which is a relatively unexplored area, particularly in a festival context. As a result, this piece of research aimed to contribute to the existing work on festival volunteers, but within a new context, that is the 2017 Edinburgh Festivals. Additionally, the plethora of research surrounding this topic is largely focused using a quantitative approach, thus this dissertation adopts an inductive, qualitative approach to gain a deeper understanding and to provide further research into volunteer motivations. The data collection was carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with a sample size of eight participants. The sample had an equal number of male and female participants which assisted the analysis of similarities motivations and gender. The results discovered three main motivational factors which were purposive, solidary and a new motive within event volunteer research, namely curiosity. The findings also showed that there were connections between motivation and satisfaction. Furthermore, other factors such as group dynamics and training were found to play a key role towards the overall experience. The findings from this dissertation are of value to event managers, in the way that they can identify motivations and satisfaction factors and use it for reference to understand volunteers. Furthermore, it can assist them to develop effective strategies which in turn should enhance the overall volunteer experience. While this study has contributed to an understanding of festival volunteer motivations from a qualitative approach, there is still a need for this methodological approach to be implemented further within the context of festival volunteering.