Abstract

Egoistic motives play an important role for the involvement of college students in volunteering activities. This study extends the prior research to the Malaysian context and aims to emphasize on descriptive analysis of egoistic motives. A quantitative cross sectional survey research method was used to collect data. A self-administered questionnaire comprised of a demographic and an adaptation of Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) was administered to samples from four public universities in Peninsular Malaysia. They were proportionately and randomly selected in the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. In a sample of 310, the results of the study revealed that egoistic motives in terms of career needs, self-protection and social needs were from high to very high level. The results also showed that the need to reduce the feeling of loneliness had recorded the highest mean of items. Besides, the results found that majority of the respondents acknowledged that egoistic motives were important for their involvement in volunteering activities. Meanwhile, 96 per cent of them acknowledged that the most important reason for their involvement in volunteering activities was to protect them from loneliness. The implications for theory and volunteers’ managerial practices are discussed and put forward.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.