Who Participates Where?

Participation in voluntary sector organizations ( VSO  s) has major implications for civil society. Extant research identifies key linkages between socio-demographic factors and VSO participation. The authors extend this literature by leveraging four waves of survey data to examine how critical factors associate with individuals’ participation choices in nine different VSO types across the advanced industrial democracies and find substantial variation in patterns of participation. For example, gender has a substantial impact. Women are more likely to participate in humanitarian, educational, environmental, and religious VSO  s, whereas men are more likely to participate in labor unions, political parties, and professional and sports associations. Other factors, such as age, education, income, and macro-level cross-national factors are also important determinants of who volunteers where. The authors consider two forms of participation – active and inactive participation – which they conceptualize as being on a continuum of intensity of participation and for which voluntary sector participants often share similar participation choices.