ECONOMIC CONTEXT OF VOLUNTEERING AND LABOUR MARKET IN SPORT

Volunteering for society is of multidimensional significance nowadays. From the organisation’s position, it represents a cheap source of work, mostly in the fields where there are several reasons for the work not being done by professionals, or possibly where it saves time for the employees who can more intensively perform other activities. It is of economical significance not only in the calculation of costs and expenses in the non-profit organizations’ management, but also on the macro-economical level. Therefore, several countries perform conversions of volunteering into full-time jobs, possibly into the economic value of volunteering in the respective country’s GDP creation. The problem probably lies in the fact that the acquired data depend more on the volunteering evaluation and are hardly comparable among the respective countries. From the marketing point of view, the other significance is found in creating goodwill and its spread by the organizations dealing with volunteering that can be used in systematic work with the media, in acquiring new volunteers, and in creating new types of stimuli for them. This research deals with the commitment and motivations of the young generation of Czech students of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport of the Charles University in Prague (further FTVS UK) and of the following foreign universities and independent graduate schools: West Virginia State University (further WVSU) in the United States of America, and Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln (further DSHS) in the Federal Republic of Germany. The acquired results show that Czech students engage in volunteering very little in comparison with the foreign ones. Czech students have even stated that they do not have sufficient motivation for volunteering. If they engage, then it is mainly in the field of sports, which is quite understandable in the case of students of sports branches of study. Actually, over 85% of FTVS UK students only volunteer in the sports domains occasionally or very seldom, and they usually do it at sport events. At the same time, foreign German and U.S. students volunteer in sport clubs as a regular activity, also more students volunteer than in the Czech Republic. From the institutional point of view, sport clubs appear to be the most important promoter of volunteering in all of the mentioned countries. For students of the studied universities, the main reason for becoming a volunteer is “to acquire new experiences”. Another reason is the fact that they want to “support a good idea / project”. The research has shown that American students consider volunteering to be a moral obligation. In fact, volunteering in their society is a completely ordinary thing which makes citizens to be proud. For American students, to be serviceable to other people is the most important factor. This can be justified by the fact that volunteering is so popular in the USA because it is accepted as an ordinary part of life. On the contrary, German students prefer the fun standpoint connected with volunteering when performing volunteering. At the same time, Czech students give priority to an interesting environment to volunteer in. In general, regarding the respondents’ motivations we can state that students of these three universities evaluate volunteering as being a very good experience for them, and they mostly want to keep on doing it. However, this motivation was lower for the FTVS UK students in absence of any reward for their work. This implies that the Czech students perceive the essence of volunteering differently from foreign students.


Introduction
Research on commitment and motivations for volunteering of the new generation in sport was carried out within the framework of the scientific branch development program UK FTVS n. 39 Social Sciences Aspects of Human Movement Studies for the years 2011-2015 at the Charles University in Prague.One part of the specified program occupies with the questions of economic sources of sport organizations and sport events.This domain also includes the human factor in sports, i.e. education and competencies of sport managers, European standards of education programs in sports, and human resources in sport organizations.The present research is actually oriented on human resources of sport organizations, which from the management point of view represent the key domain for their operative and strategic development.This research question follows in long-term research studies which were realized within the framework of the grant MSM 115 100 002: Psycho-social Functions of Movement Activities As Part of the Life Quality of Adults in the years 1999-2004 and in the years 2006-2008 in the project CZ.04.3.07/3.2.01.3/3345 "Program of profession development in a field of sport services in interaction with labour market requirements".
Volunteering in sport emanates from the general principles of volunteering which the functioning of non-state non-profit organizations is based on.Outside of the sport organizations, volunteers are used in social services and by religious and ecological organizations, but also, e.g., by universities.Thus, volunteering is delimited in a high quantity of alternative definitions that deal both with the questions of volunteering from the standpoint of both non-state non-profit organizations and of an individual person who participates in volunteering.For instance, Wilson (2000) defines volunteering as follows: "Volunteering means any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group or organisation".Duben (1996) says that "the core of the concept of volunteering consists in individuals participating in spontaneous, private and freely chosen activities which bring common welfare that can be experienced by the participants, i.e. the volunteers.At the same time, these activities aren't connected with a financial reward or another benefit".However, the entrepreneurial position in the form of non-state non-profit organizations is not easy to define; this concerns mainly the imaginary borders of where volunteering begins and where it ends.Also, the existence of a symbolic reward plays a role, since this is the purpose of volunteering in sports or leisure organizations.
From this viewpoint, Novotný, Lukeš et al. (2008), authors of a study with the topic "Factors of success of non-state non-profit organizations", defined a volunteer as "a person who works without expecting a reward and without right to it.We consider a volunteer also a person receiving a symbolic reward from the organization, this reward being at maximum one level lower than the wage of an ordinary professional at a comparable position, or an average wage in the economy for hardly identifiable jobs".However, it is clear that the volunteers' work brings benefits to the non-profit organizations.These benefits are obvious mainly in the fact that volunteering generates wage costs saving, creates jobs and allows realizing both single actions and long-term voluntary programs that would be hard to implement without volunteers.According to Novák (2008), specific contributions of volunteering for an organization can be seen mainly in the following facts: • it represents a cheap source of labour, even if using volunteers is not for free; • it has retroactively an influence on the organization's mission that has to remain attractive for volunteers; • the presence of volunteers testifies about the goodwill of the organization and about the advisability of its activities; • volunteers are usually a source of new spirit, ideas, and enthusiasm; • they bring new contacts to the organization and are a source of candidates for paid jobs.Naturally, using volunteers in an organization has also its economic side.In economics, the labour market assumes that the labour supply, represented by the workers, is limited by the decision-making of an individual between the utility of leisure time and the utility of the product he / she can buy if he / she sacrifices some leisure time to a working activity to earn money.Microeconomics does not count with volunteering that does not bring utility via earned money.This is why we shall watch the labour market reality in a new way and we shall realize that, if work is done with pleasure, it can bear utility directly and not only through buying products for money earned by working.
It seems appropriate to wonder why the phenomenon of volunteering exists on the labour market and what tendencies in its frequency can be expected.Volunteering is done by a volunteer defined by the Czech Statistical Office as a person "... who is not fully employed for the given performed activity by the economic subject and whose activity is performed without a monetary or any other reward or legitimate claim." A rationally behaving person, assumed in economics, satisfies his / her needs so that he / she is not employed in his / her free time, but he / she performs economic activities that bring him / her products (an independent economic activity, e.g., growing vegetables, repairs, property maintenance) with utility.This is combined with real leisure time without economic activities that bring him / her utility.
If the wage rate grows, a human individual enlarges his / her employment activities (e.g., job) and purchases products which bring him / her utility for the acquired wage.This is being compared to the utility brought to him / her by leisure time (Fig. 1).
If the needs of the individual are sufficiently satisfied within a relatively short working time, which is true mostly in the developed market economies with high wage rates, he / she still has got enough leisure time left, which causes a decrease in his / her marginal utility.In this way, an occasion for volunteering is created.Volunteering brings utility directly, without the need of a monetary equivalent for the work.Such a situation can be also reached by individuals whose needs are satisfied by parents (e.g., students) or by the state, in the case of people having non-job incomes (retired people), for instance.
The principles of decisions about volunteering are in general identical to the reality as described above and shown in Fig. 1.We can also use indifference analysis without any problems.In this case, the horizontal axis would represent leisure time or the utility derived from leisure time; on the vertical axis, there will not be the wage rate multiplied by hours, but the utility derived from volunteering.The usefulness degree of the phenomena that are on the axes is expressed by the slope of the indifference curves and is completely individual.
With regard to the increase of incomes in most world economies, and probably also with the partial deflection from the consumption society, we can expect that the supply of volunteering labour will increase in the future.It is suitable to remind that volunteering could also be seen as a certain investment with future incomes, but this is a completely different point of view.Volunteering brings economic effects that are quantifiable in money and that are influencing the GDP creation.For the Czech Republic, these are registered by the Czech Statistical Office since 2005.
Volunteering from the individual's position is in the first place concentrated on his / her motivation for volunteering.As Novotný (2008) mentions, the motivation of a volunteer is based mostly on a ground that can be described as "a warming feeling for having done something good".Nevertheless, we have to admit that the volunteer's motives are connected with many factors including the volunteer's education, his / her upbringing, social contact possibilities, but mainly with the contents of the specific volunteering.That naturally reflects in acquiring experiences, using skills and abilities usable also at work or for studies, and that might be hard to acquire.Other attractive motives include new friendships and contacts, new "adventures" and acquiring some prestige and self-confidence.Important and non-negligible is the fact that the individual's participation in volunteering strengthens his / her sense for the democratic process and civic society principles.
Chelladurai (2006( ), Smith (1981)), Knoke & Prensky (1984) emphasized the significance of a three-mode incentive scheme for the analysis and understanding of volunteer participation.Knoke & Premsky (1984) specify these stimuli as utilitarian, affective, and normative.Utilitarian stimuli frequently make part of the volunteers' motivation.One of the volunteering domains includes housework and family education.Another one can be mentioned as human capital improvement thanks to the acquired skills and abilities (e.g., children's training in a sport activity).
The effectiveness of volunteering stimuli reflects social and relationship aspects of their realization.According to Clary, Snyder & Stukas (1996), the inventory of volunteering functions includes socially motivated constructs that indicate a graduation of the volunteer's engagement in the social network where he / she meets the expectations of other individuals that act similarly.The effectiveness of the stimuli depends on the degree of the volunteer's identification with the identity of the organization which he / she is working in, and on the assimilation of this identity by him / her.He/she then further develops the identity of the organization as a volunteer.This is presented by numerous studies (e.g., Chacon, 2007;Finkelstein, 2008;Finkelstein, Penner, Brannick, 2005;Graube, Piliavin, 2000;Laverie, McDonald, 2007).
Normative stimuli (with set norms), on one side, connect the altruistic aspect of the motivation, i.e. work for the benefit of others with a certain career (even if not a professional one) which is expressed through the norms of the organization the volunteer is working for.This "career", created out of the personal interest of an individual, supports his / her personal development on the basis of new skills, the feeling he / she has something to offer to the people, socialization and support of affiliation to a certain (e.g., sport) organization.It is a leisure time career.This topic is studied, for instance, by Cuskelly & Harrington (1997) and Nichols (2005).
The question of volunteering has a long tradition in Europe, and many researchers have focused on it for a long period of time.According to a study by Vocasport (2004), the European sport represents economically about 2% of the GDP of the European countries.Other data describing initial possibilities for evaluating the employment in sport and the participation of volunteers are the following ones: 1 million sport associations, 10 million volunteers, 85 million members of sport clubs, 400 thousand small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (instructors, animators), 250 thousand coaches, 50 thousand professional sportspeople, 30 thousand traders, 50-100 thousand individuals in non-profit organizations (social integration, people with physical and mental disabilities, etc.).
We can mention the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden, but also the United Kingdom, Denmark or Germany as an example of European countries traditionally using volunteering in sport (see works by Byers (2013), Wicker & Hallman (2013), Kodama, Doherty, Popovic (2013).The Czech Republic traditionally supports and develops volunteering in sport, mainly in the domain of the qualification of voluntary trainers and sport instructors by means of non-state non-profit organizations.Of course, this domain is nowadays exposed to the influences of the sport market, its supply and demand.Thus, the situation is influenced by a very various and diverse supply of sport products and a very time-varying demand for individual sports.
When we classify the studies done on volunteering in sports worldwide, they deal mainly with the questions of qualification (Rychtecký, 2004) of volunteers such as trainers, instructors, and officials in sport in comparison with professional workers in the respective countries.Concerning the questions of volunteering in sport organizations, researchers like Ibsen & Seippel (2010), Osterlund (2011), van den Roest (2011) mostly study changes in the volunteering of sport clubs and sport associations with regard to the commercialization and its local effects at the place of their activities.Nichols & Shepherds (2006) solve the questions regarding the level of the volunteers' engagement compared to the engagement of members with paid membership in sport clubs, regarding the club sport activities, and this in connection with the social status of the individuals.Nagl, Egli, Schlesinger (2011) analyse the motivations of long-term commitment of volunteers in sport clubs.
In the case of sport, we should not only watch the sport organizations and their volunteers, but also the big sport events where the work of volunteers is irreplaceable.As an example we can mention the Olympic Games in London 2012 with 70 000 participating volunteers.The questions of volunteers' participation in big sport events are studied by authors such as Chalip (2000), Moreno, Moragas, Panaiagua (2000), Harrington, Cuskelly, Auld (2000), Downward, Ralston (2006).
Volunteering is also studied in our research which is interested in the engagement and motivations of individuals for volunteering.

Research aims
The main goal of this research is to find out and to analyse how much the students nowadays engage in volunteering, mainly with the accent on volunteering in sport.It is a primary explorative research in the domain that has not been much studied yet.The research is based upon a questionnaire research performed at three universities with the sport field of studies, from three different countries -Czech Republic, Germany, and the USA.Partial goals included into the creation of the questionnaire are presented in the further quoted list of information in the Research Methodology chapter.

Methods
As mentioned above, this research was executed thanks to a questionnaire research at three universities (always one per country) from the Czech Republic, Germany, and the USA.As each of the chosen countries is represented by one selected university, we cannot consider the studied population as representative and generalize the results for the whole student population of the given countries.A questionnaire had to be created and verified by a pilot study in three different language modifications which were mutually equivalent.The results shall show the differences in the approach, attitudes, and commitment of young people to volunteering in sport.Further, the specific universities from each country and the schedule of the questionnaire research are stated: • Germany -Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln (further DSHS) -December 2011; • Czech Republic -Faculty of Physical Education and Sport of the Charles University in Prague (further FTVS UK) -January 2012; • the USA -West Virginia State University (further WVSU) -February 2012.The foreign universities were chosen with regard to the feasibility of the research, on the basis of a long-term contract cooperation in students' and lecturers' exchange with the FTVS UK.
The studied population consisted of 280 respondents in total (96 German, 94 Czech, 90 American ones).A condition for being included into the population was to be a student of a full-time study (bachelor or master study) with sport as the field of study at one of the three universities (FTVS UK, DSHS, WVSU) without respect to the chosen major.The data acquisition was performed by randomly choosing students of the universities (by the random walk method) during both school and extra-curricular activities.The research goal was to find the commitment of the students to volunteering in sport (further SD) and the popularity of volunteering at each of the mentioned universities.The questionnaire was expected to bring the following information: • the popularity of volunteering in sport with respect to other domains; • how often students are engaged in volunteering in sport and if they are ready to do it more intensively; • via whom or how the students get involved in volunteering in sport most frequently; • the motives and incentives (stimuli) leading the students to volunteering in sport; • what aspects are important for them regarding volunteering in sport and if they are willing to do it without gains; • how often the students commit themselves within their university; • how they perceive volunteering and what status volunteering has, up to them, in their country.The structure of questions divided the questionnaire into four parts.The first one divided the students into two groups.The first group consisted of students having experience with volunteering in sport, and the second group of students had no such experience.In the second part, questions were addressed only to those students that had already volunteered in sport.These questions regarded only volunteering in sport (e.g., the frequency of performing this volunteering, at which institution, the motivation, etc.).The third part was designed for all students again, in order to find out what approach they have towards volunteering and how they perceive volunteering within their university.In the fourth part, the respondents answered social-demographic questions.
For ensuring the validity of the language modifications of the questionnaire, a pilot study was always performed on a small pattern (30 German, 10 American) of respondents from the given universities.
The last part of the questionnaire was designed to find out if there is some influence and if so, what influence social-demographic data have on volunteering, i.e. whether the students volunteer or not with respect to their performance level, time (work) load or financial income.However, from the results it was not possible to find out any substantial dependence among the given aspects and the commitment in volunteering.Moreover, the share of non-volunteering German and American students was very low, so it was not possible to consider these results as representative.

Students' commitment to volunteering
The first part of the results is focused on finding out whether the students from the participating universities engaged in volunteering at all.The results show that 35.1 % of the Czech students from the FTVS UK have no experience with this activity.In comparison with the foreign students, only 7.8% of the WVSU students and 9.4% of the DSHS students did not engage in volunteering at all.Table 1 shows the results of an overview.Some reasons why students did not participate in volunteering for the DSHS and the WVSU students were as follows: "I had no occasion" and "I don't want to work for free".For about 35.1% of the FTVS UK students that did not volunteer, the main reason for not engaging themselves was completely different: "I did not have enough motivation".A less part of the respondents mentioned "I had no occasion." When students of the participating universities volunteered, they did it mostly -as we could expect -in the domain of sports.The domains of sports and physical education reached almost 90% for all of the three groups.In Fig. 2, we can see that other attractive domains for volunteering are mainly the following ones: working with youth, volunteering in the education sector and in the social sector.Volunteering in the education sector is very frequent in the USA, as students like to pass on knowledge to younger students or to those of their age mates that do not achieve good study results.We also have to mention that the WVSU students are more active in the charity and church domains.

Volunteering in the domain of sports
The following results concern only the questions dealing with volunteering in sport.These were answered by part of respondents that stated their participation in such volunteering.These were 53 students of the FTVS UK, 77 students of the DSHS and 74 students of the WVSU.
The intensity of students' participation in volunteering in sports is different for students of the FTVS UK than for those from the two other universities.At the FTVS UK, over 85% of students help in the domain of sports mostly occasionally or very seldom, mainly at sport events.The remaining 15% voluntarily participate at least once a week or at least once a month.At the DSHS and the WVSU, over 30% of the volunteers help a sport organization at least weekly or monthly.From the point of view of the institution where the volunteering is done, sport clubs and sport associations are the most frequent ones.At DSHS, even 90% of students active in volunteering in sport do this in a sport club or a sport association.The division of volunteering in sport within the institutions is given mainly by the structure of the sport organization in their respective countries and also by the frequency at which the students participate in volunteering.This can be well seen in Fig. 3.
Actually, sport clubs and sport associations (further SC and SA) are amongst the biggest promoters of volunteering in sport.Through an SC or an SA, 74% of the students of DSHS, 45% of the FTVS UK students and 44% of the WVSU students knew about volunteering.A lot of sportspeople become volunteers at their clubs, as it is often the simplest way to find helpmates.The trainers can easily appeal to the club members from their wards.Also, volunteering spreads mainly through family and friends (FTVS UK 45%, DSHS 40%, WVSU 60%), which is a very feasible and trustworthy way to spread volunteering.When we compare the ways of spreading volunteering through schools, then secondary schools seem to be a better mode than graduate schools and universities to recruit volunteers.This may be proven by the fact that secondary schools promote volunteering more; but we also have to take into account that university students prefer paid rewards, as they can earn money at more interesting positions thanks to their age.For many students, volunteering is a certain first experience within a specific professional domain.Volunteering spreads least through the sources of information.Through television and internet, less than 5% of the respondents from all of the three studied groups learned about volunteering in sport.The questions about the volunteers' motivations have been designed first of all to find out what mostly motivates the students to become volunteers in sport.The students were allowed to choose out of six possibilities.Every motive was given a grade like at school, where 1 meant "very important" and 5 "very unimportant".The resulting positioning of the motives is shown in Table 2.As we can see in Table 2, students of two participating universities mentioned "acquiring new experience" as the main reason for becoming a volunteer.Another important reason was "to support a good idea / project".This reason finished at the second place in the average of the three universities.The research showed that the students of the WVSU considered volunteering to be a moral obligation more than those of the other two universities.Volunteering in their society is a completely usual thing that makes citizens proud.Exactly this motive was considered by the WVSU students as the second most important one.On the contrary, the DSHS and FTVS UK students considered this reason not a very important one."To get some prestige and acknowledgement" was almost unimportant for all of the three groups of students.However, some students used volunteering for improving their social status.
Motivational aspects which are important for the students of the participating universities during volunteering in sport itself are shown in Table 3.As we can see, the FTVS UK and the DSHS students find fun during volunteering as decisive, or it is for them to be active (in volunteering) in a domain that is interesting for the volunteer.These aspects are also important for the WVSU students, but the most important aspect for them is to be beneficial for others.In the framework of volunteering in sports, we can see that respondents from all of the three studied groups considered this type of work as a very good experience, and they usually want to keep on doing it.However, this motivation was lower in the case of the FTVS UK students who negatively perceived the absence of financial reward for their work.From this, we can deduce that these students do not appreciate or do not understand the significance of volunteering.

Conclusions
The evaluation of the students' commitment in the chosen countries in the university environment also reflects how the respective society perceives volunteering.In regard to volunteering at the university, the American university results were higher than of the DSHS and FTVS UK ones.Almost 50% of the WVSU students participated in voluntary activities within their university.Obviously, the utility coming directly from the activity without the need of financial reward is highly appreciated.At the same time, the FTVS UK and the DSHS "register" only 20% of voluntary active students.If the students participated in volunteering within their universities, the at the WVSU sport projects with children, social projects and, last but not least, projects in education prevailed.At the DSHS, the students mainly helped with different sport competitions organized by their university or at conferences.At the FTVS UK, students mostly mentioned participating in sports events.Thus, it depends on which types of volunteering society offers and how well it is promoting them.The obtained results show that the American society environment offers a broader spectrum of volunteering than the Czech and the German environments.Nevertheless, sport makes part of this offer in all of the mentioned countries.As regards the promotion of volunteering, the results show a rather low contribution from the side of the institutions.Sports clubs appeared as being the key institutions for engaging volunteers in sports.In promotion, the respondents of our research prefer the "word of mouth" advertising which is a form of personal address, although they are aware of the role of a targeted media promotion.
Regarding the motivation for volunteering, the attitude of the society to its appreciation is important, but also the GDP per capita level which differs between the countriessieges of the studied universities.This was also showed in the case of our respondents.We can say that in this respect, the attitude of the institutions to their experiences with volunteering when acquiring a job.This was not studied in our research.
The social climate influences the respondents' opinion on the necessity and usefulness of volunteering in the respective countries as well.Unfortunately, obtained results show that the approach of the Czech students is different from the ones abroad.Foreign universities students consider volunteering in society as necessary, Czechs only useful.
To conclude, we have to openly admit that the Czech Republic, that has a rich tradition of volunteering mainly in sport, nowadays stagnates in engaging the young generation into volunteering.Many economical and non-economic factors influence this, but these are outside of the framework of our article.Nevertheless, the sport organizations in the Czech Republic have to ask themselves if volunteering is necessary or only useful for them, and act in the direction.

TABLE 1 .
Student Source: calculated by the authors.