The Relationship between Generalized Self-Efficacy and Volunteer Status, Frequency, and Hours in Singapore

Volunteerism—an indicator of social cohesion—is a choice only a minority of the population in any country adopts in their lives. This is largely because volunteerism is costly, as it requires time investment for public goods with no economic rewards. Moreover, volunteering requires knowledge and skills to resolve nonspecific and difficult challenges demanded by various volunteer activities. Even when one is ready to invest some time into a prosocial activity, one encounters another barrier that asks if the invested time would not be a waste because of the lack of appropriate ability to meet the challenges. Thus, human capital represented by education has been frequently proven to be a necessary condition for or a significant enabler of volunteering. However, education is not a sufficient condition for a person to volunteer. Therefore, the present study proposes that people with a higher level of generalized self-efficacy are more likely to be volunteers, independent of their levels of education and socioeconomic standings. Generalized self-efficacy evaluates the belief in one’s ability to “respond to novel or difficult situations and to deal with any associated obstacles or setbacks” (Schwarzer and Jerusalem 1995:35). The study used data from the Individual Giving Study in Singapore, which was administered in 2021 when the pandemic hit the country hard. The results indicate that generalized self-efficacy was significantly associated with (1) volunteer intention, (2) volunteer status, and (3) volunteer frequency. Further, the Cragg exponential hurdle regression model reports that self-efficacy was related to not only the likelihood of volunteering but also the increased volunteer hours, even during the pandemic. Thus, the study concludes that generalized self-efficacy as a stable psychological trait concerning the belief in one’s problem-solving ability increases the probability of volunteer behaviors controlling for other powerful confounders such as human capital, socioeconomic status, or religiosity.