Volunteers’ Motivation, Satisfaction, and Management in Large-scale Events: An Empirical Test from the 2010 Shanghai World Expo

The studies of volunteerism in sporting events have investigated various motivations, organizational attributes, and their effect on satisfaction and behavioral intention, while by far, there is no research conducted on the scale development of volunteers’ motivation and satisfaction in World Expo. By empirically testing the revised version of Bang and Chelladurai (Paper presented at the Conference of the North American Society for Sport Management, 2003) VMS-ISE developed by Bang and Ross, this study tried to identify the motivational factors of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo volunteers and the inter-relationship between volunteers motivation, experience, and satisfaction. The result shows that the prime motivations for the World Expo volunteers are those items focusing on doing something good for the organization and society, such as “Expression of Values”, “Career Orientation,” and “Love of Expo”. Practical implications and future research directions of event volunteerism management are also discussed.