Psychosocial benefits of civic and political participation across the life span and in a European comparison: Who gains what from which activities, and why?
DFG-funded project (2016-2021)
Collaborators: Matthias Lühr (doctoral student) and Maike Luhmann (consultant)
The purpose of this project was to investigate which types of voluntary participation would be beneficial to participating individuals in which ways, why, at which age, and in which societies. We differentiated between levels of involvement (memberships of, active participation in, and volunteering for voluntary organizations) and types of participation, including civic and political participation. Both refer to unpaid voluntary activities directed at the common good, but civic participation involves immediate helping (e.g., serving in an animal shelter), whereas political participation aims at policy change (e.g., petitioning and boycotting local farmers’ products to make them do more for animal welfare).
We analyzed panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and its continuation, Understanding Society (UndSoc), and cross-sectional, cross-national data from Round 6 (2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS). As outcomes, we considered alcohol and tobacco use and various indicators of well-being. Our longitudinal studies revealed that most associations between voluntary participation (of whatever type or level) and substance use, as well as well-being indicators, reflected interindividual differences and might therefore point at selection effects. For substance use in particular, we obtained no evidence for especially protective effects of volunteering as contrasted to mere memberships or active participation in voluntary organizations. Instead, some types of voluntary participation (e.g., service-orientated) in some groups of individuals (e.g., young women) and in particular contexts (e.g., UK) may dampen alcohol consumption, whereas others may foster alcohol consumption or smoking (e.g., voluntary memberships and even volunteering in German males). Moreover, there was no convincing evidence that activity in voluntary organizations of whatever type or volunteering might be associated with a practically relevant improvement in subjective well-being and its precursors, such as social relationships or control beliefs. Our results indicated that other leisure activities, including informal socializing and informal helping, might be as equally suited as (or even superior to) volunteering in their potential to improve well-being across age groups.
Our findings did not show any systematic differences between civic and political participation in the effects on substance use and various well-being indicators. In longitudinal studies, we obtained no evidence for age differences in the effects either, but using the cross-sectional ESS data, we found indications that both civic and political participation might foster eudaimonic well-being (e.g., flow experiences, sense of competence, and sense of direction in life) in older adults in particular. Thus, despite our largely discouraging results, there remains a possibility that volunteering can substantially contribute to outcomes such as mattering or sense of meaning in life, particularly in those older adults who lack meaningful and productive social roles. Finally, with the ESS data, we found that the link between civic and political participation and eudaimonic and social well-being varied across 29 European countries and that GDP per capita partly explained this variation for civic participation. We conclude that civic participation may feel more fulfilling or meaningful in the countries where the need for it is greater.
Our modest results align with recent findings from other longitudinal studies on the effects of volunteering. Thus, it may be warranted to adjust the recruitment strategies of voluntary organizations and policy messages to potential volunteers: Given little evidence on the benefits of volunteering to engaged individuals, it is advisable to downplay the “win-win” expectations of volunteering and to focus on its intrinsic values instead (i.e., contributing to the common good by direct helping or by effecting policy change).