Formal volunteering: a cross-national test

In this paper, we integrate disparate literatures to contribute to a better cross-national understanding of formal volunteering. We propose that three forms of capital, namely human (country wealth and country education), social (collectivism and liberal democracy) and cultural capital (religiosity) are related to formal volunteering. We use Hierarchical Linear Modeling to test our hypotheses on 38,119 individuals from 21 countries. Our results show all forms of capital (country wealth, country education, religiosity, societal collectivism and liberal democracy) have positive relationships with formal volunteering. Implications for practice and future research are discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.