Public Spending and Volunteering: "The Big Society", Crowding Out, and Volunteering Capital

Koen Bartels (), Guido Cozzi and Noemi Mantovan

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The current British Government's "Big Society" plan is based on the idea that granting more freedom to local communities and volunteers will compensate for a withdrawal of public agencies and spending. This idea is grounded on a widely held belief about the relationship between government and volunteering: a high degree of government intervention will cause a crowding out of voluntary activity. Up to now, however, the crowding out hypothesis has hardly been supported by any empirical evidence or solid theoretical foundations. We develop a simple theoretical model to predict how fiscal policy affects the individual decision to volunteer or not. The predictions of the model are tested through the econometric analysis of two survey data sets, and interpretative analysis of narratives of local volunteers and public officials. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our results suggest that volunteering, by the individuals in the actively working population, declines when government intervention is decreased.

Keywords: Volunteering; Labor Supply; Public Goods; Altruism. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 H31 H41 I38 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Public Spending and Volunteering: "The Big Society", Crowding Out, and Volunteering Capital (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:29730

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