How perceptions of risk and impacts lead to volunteering behavior during COVID-19: The mediating role of volunteering motivations

Extraordinary events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rarely happen but they bring about the opportunities for researchers to explore human’s helping motives and behaviors. This cross-sectional study aims to examine different volunteering motivations of 460 Vietnamese young adults during COVID-19, whether they are predicted by self-perceptions of COVID-19 impacts and risk of infection, and whether they predict actual volunteering duration. The study also addresses the lack of sample diversity in previous research as students of all majors (medical/nursing and non-medical/nursing majors) are examined. Parallel mediation analyses reveal that the motivation to resolve one’s own issues mediates the relationship between perceived impact of COVID-19 on oneself and volunteering duration, while the motivation to enact personal values mediates the relationship between perceived impact of COVID-19 on others and volunteering duration. Implications for the underlying motivations of helping behavior during high-risk emergency crises are finally discussed