Volunteers at biking race events: Antecedents of commitment and intention to remain volunteering at future events

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of volunteer commitment and intention to remain volunteering for the same event in the future, in the context of two annually held Norwegian cycling race events.

A cross-sectional design was used, applying a questionnaire that was developed and distributed to the cycling events volunteers both in hard copies and as online format by QuestBack.

The volunteers were motivated by egoistic, altruistic, connection to the sport, and external factors. They were highly committed and intended to remain as a volunteers in the future events. Older age; satisfaction from their own contribution and type of work, from recognition; and motivation as personal connections to the sport predicted commitment. Higher levels of education, commitment, and motivation by personal connections to the sport predicted intention to remain as a volunteer for future events. A factor-based structure of sport event volunteer satisfaction was presented, which, to the best of the knowledge is the first of its kind.

The study should be replicated across several events to test the external validation of the models.

This understanding of motivation and satisfaction can be beneficial for the management of volunteers in order to retain the experienced and motivated volunteers and to ensure the continuation of the event in the future.

The study adds new knowledge to the research field by presenting an extensive, updated literature review, development of a fist factor-analysed scale for volunteer satisfaction, and the first application of the model including volunteer demographics, satisfaction, motivation, and commitment in predicting intention to remain volunteers for the biking event in the future.