Happy to help: welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme

Christian Krekel, Ganga Shreedhar, Helen Lee, Claire Marshall, Alison Boler, Allison Smith and Paul Dolan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We study the wellbeing returns from volunteering in England's National Health Service (NHS) Volunteer Responders, set up in response to Covid-19. Using linked survey and administrative data, we exploit the oversubscription of volunteers and the random allocation of tasks via an app to establish causality. Volunteers show stronger wellbeing and feelings of belongingness and connectedness to their local area. Welfare analyses suggest that the benefits of the programme substantially exceeded its costs. We are the first to study the welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme. Our findings show that pro-social behaviour improves personal wellbeing as well as social welfare.

Keywords: volunteering; pro-social behaviour; causal wellbeing returns; quasi-experiment; welfare analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 D64 I31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2024-11-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-inv
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Published in Review of Economics and Statistics, 25, November, 2024, pp. 1-64. ISSN: 0034-6535

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