Living Up to Your Own Standards? Patterns of Civic Norms and Volunteering in Germany

Kathrin Ackermann, Jonathan Mylius, Annette Haussmann and Stefanie Wiloth
Additional contact information
Kathrin Ackermann: Department for Social Sciences, University of Siegen, Germany
Jonathan Mylius: Faculty of Theology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Annette Haussmann: Faculty of Theology, Heidelberg University, Germany
Stefanie Wiloth: Institute for Ageing Research, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland

Social Inclusion, 2025, vol. 13

Abstract: One of the most significant challenges facing contemporary societies is the increasing polarization of social and political ideologies. Against this backdrop, it is highly important to understand the foundations of social cohesion in order to effectively address this trend. One of the fundamental pillars of social cohesion is volunteering, which entails contributing to a collective good through unpaid work in an organization or association. While a substantial body of research has been dedicated to examining the socio‐structural and sociodemographic correlates of volunteering, the relationship between norms and volunteering behavior has received comparatively less attention. In this study, we employ the concept of citizenship norms to empirically explore the patterns of civic norms, particularly norms of solidarity and norms of participation, and volunteering. Furthermore, we investigate how these patterns differ across societal groups, including age, gender, education, and religion. Our quantitative analysis is based on data from a population survey in Germany, with approximately 1,800 respondents. We find that civic norms relate to volunteering, with participation norms showing a stronger link than solidarity norms. These relationships are not moderated by moral and socio‐structural factors but remain consistent across different societal groups.

Keywords: civic norms; social norms; social capital; solidarity; volunteering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/10007 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v13:y:2025:a:10007

DOI: 10.17645/si.10007

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().