Opportunities for increasing volunteering in Australia

The focus of this thesis is to consider how incentives might be utilised to increase volunteering in Australia. Volunteering, an intrinsically motivated and often altruistic activity, is not the standard candidate for incentives; however, ruling them out categorically overlooks how incentives might be utilised to affirm, re-engage and better support volunteers. Utilising two methods: (1) a scoping study, that examines existing literature around incentives and prosocial behaviour/volunteering; (2) a quantitative examination of socio-demographic and life event determinants of volunteering in Australia. These two methods provide a basis to consider if, when and how incentives might be utilised to increase volunteering