Sport volunteers' motivation and their life aspirations

Abstract

Sports industry in Singapore is seen to be growing rapidly with various top stature events being hosted locally. To support the cost operations of this expanding industry, there is a need to open more opportunities for sport volunteers. However, the National Sports Participation Survey revealed a low percentage of volunteering participation amongst Singaporeans. This shows that there is a need to understand the reason why people volunteer in sports and why the others do not. The purpose of the present study is to examine the motivation of sport volunteering using the self-determination theory approach. The research questions aim to find out the differences between sports volunteers and non-volunteers in terms of basic needs satisfaction, life aspirations and motivation regulation. 145 sports volunteers and 155 non-volunteers from Nanyang Technological University took part in the study by completing a questionnaire. The results revealed that non-volunteers focused more on extrinsic life goals than volunteers; (p<.01). Individual sports player emphasised more on intrinsic life goals than non-sports players; (p<.05). Volunteers also scored higher than non-volunteers in terms of relatedness; (p < .01). Team sports players scored higher than non-sports players in terms of autonomy; (p<.05). This study suggested educators and policy makers to consider the important findings on the present study when grooming the future leaders of this society.