The effect of vested interest on the evaluation of potential volunteers.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examines whether individuals who express a clear personal stake or vested interest in a social cause are favored as volunteers over those who lack a clear personal stake. A series of collaborative studies (Ratner & Clarke, 2003) showed that individuals who express a vested interest in a cause appear to be preferred as volunteers over individuals who do not express a personal stake. This preference of vested volunteers occurred even when the nonvested individual was willing to make a more substantial time commitment to the cause. The five collaborative studies (Ratner & Clarke, 2003) inspired the 2 dissertation studies. Study 1 of the dissertation indicates that even a person with a personal stake in the cause who provides an extrinsic reason for volunteering is rated more favorably than a nonvested person who mentions intrinsic reasons for volunteering. Study 2 was conducted using members of actual volunteer organizations as participants, and it provides strong evidence that the effect of vestedness extends to real-world organizations. In addition, open-ended data from Study 2 indicates that participants tended to assign "face of the organization" tasks to vested applicants (public, community-oriented tasks) while assigning clerical tasks to nonvested applicants. The potential impact of these effects is discussed.