Italians’ response to the call of volunteering for COVID-19 emergency

Journal title PSICOLOGIA DI COMUNITA’
Author/s Anna Maria Meneghini, Sandro Stanzani
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2021/1
Language Italian Pages 18 P. 11-28 File size 211 KB
DOI 10.3280/PSC2021-001002
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Emergency situations mobilize individuals to help the community. With the aim to explore whether, among the facilitating factors, there are the degree of civil culture, the sense of com-munity, and in particular people’s previous experiences of continuous and/or episodic volun-teering, a survey was conducted on a representative sample of Italians (n = 1011). The anal-yses have been conducted taking into account the involvement of the participants in voluntary initiatives related to the current health emergency. The results show that more than 30% of Ital-ians joined a volunteer initiative in response to COVID-19. In addition, the data reveal the presence of a "heritage of civil culture" that finds a channel of expression in episodic volun-teering, rather in the more traditional recurring volunteering.

Keywords: Continuous volunteering, episodic volunteering, membership, bonds, civic en-gagement, trust.

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Anna Maria Meneghini, Sandro Stanzani, La risposta degli italiani all’appello del volontariato per l’emergenza COVID-19 in "PSICOLOGIA DI COMUNITA’" 1/2021, pp 11-28, DOI: 10.3280/PSC2021-001002