The relationship between college students’ voluntary participation motivation and social responsibility

We explored the relationship between college students’ voluntary participation motivation and social responsibility, and the mediating roles of volunteer service participation and self-worth. We tested 644 college students using the Volunteer Participation Motivation Scale, the Volunteer Service Participation Scale, the Self-Worth Scale, and the Social Responsibility Scale. The results showed that there was a significant direct predictive effect of volunteer participation motivation on sense of social responsibility. Further, volunteer service participation played a mediating role between the volunteer participation motivation and social responsibility of college students. Sense of self-worth also had a mediating effect on the link between volunteer participation motivation and social responsibility, although the chain mediating effect of volunteer service participation and sense of self-worth on the link between volunteer participation and sense of self-worth was not significant. Thus, motivation for volunteering not only directly predicted students’ sense of social responsibility, but also indirectly predicted their sense of social responsibility by predicting the frequency of their volunteering participation and self-worth.