Does Volunteer Service Foster Education for A Sustainable Future?—Empirical Evidence from Chinese University Students

Ling Chen, Degang Li () and Yong Li ()
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Ling Chen: The Communist Youth League Committee, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China
Degang Li: School of Economics, Beijing International Studies University, Beijing 100024, China
Yong Li: School of Law, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: Sustainable development is an extremely important global vision of the current era, and higher education plays a significant role in deeply immersing young people in this prospect. As an important part of labor education for contemporary Chinese university students, volunteer service has proven to be a sustainable and valuable talent training process. Different from the grand narrative and simple political perspective of previous studies, this paper selects the relevant data of a university in Beijing as a sample to conduct a “black box disassembling” micro study. By building three sets of data, the authors were able to adopt difference-in-differences, analysis of variance, and hierarchical regression methods to study the comprehensive improvement of university students’ inner ability and sense of responsibility after participating in voluntary services. Results show that participation in more voluntary services will improve students’ performance and employment quality, mostly promote students’ teamwork ability, and differentially enhance students’ comprehensive, personal, and collective senses of responsibility, thus facilitating education for a sustainable future and, accordingly, economic development. The study reveals the formation mechanism of the sustainability value of voluntary service in more detail, complements the absence of Chinese sample data in international studies, and lays an effective foundation for more comprehensive micro studies in the future.

Keywords: volunteer service; Chinese university students; sustainable future; education evaluation; quantitative research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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