A Review of Research

Abstract: The main part of this chapter consists of a lengthy review of the empirical literature supporting the different types of volunteers and volunteering set out in Chapter 4. These types are volunteering for people, material volunteering, idea and faunal volunteering, and environmental volunteering.

The serious leisure perspective has so far failed to generate an equally strong interest research on all these types.

Keywords: interests in volunteering; serious leisure perspective; volunteering; volunteering research

Stebbins, Robert A. Leisure and the Motive to Volunteer: Theories of Serious, Casual, and Project-Based Leisure. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137585172.0007.

Within the serious leisure perspective (SLP) by far the greatest amount of research has been conducted on the SL popular (people) type of volunteer and volunteering. Serious leisure material volunteering is a distant second-level focus, with the SL environmental type coming in third (two articles). Only one article exists on SL faunal volunteering and one on SL idea volunteering. Meanwhile, the other thirteen types remain to be explored through formal research. In the conclusion I speculate about the reasons for this skewed pattern of research and suggest a program of research to correct it.