Strengthening volunteer motivation and identification with Dutch cultural history through a game-based intervention

Abstract

Volunteerism has been an important part in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) for creating sustainable cities and communities and preserving cultural heritage, like Dutch mills. Identifying with an organization, and potentially cultural elements, has shown to increase intention to volunteer as well as being mediated by volunteer motivation. This study aims to increase motivation in young adults to encourage them to volunteer for mills. Narrative Game Based Interventions (NGBIs) may have the potential to encourage young adults to participate in volunteering. Forty-eight participants (age, M = 24.2 years) participated. For this study a text only NGBI was created where participants played through a day-in-the-life of a mill volunteer (experimental) and compared to a video (control) to investigate the mediated relation between cultural identity, volunteer motivation and volunteer intention among young adults. Results indicate that young adults with a stronger cultural identity were more likely to be potential volunteers but no indirect effect of volunteer motivation. There was no difference between the conditions. It was concluded that targeting identity through games may be an effective way to increase volunteer intention for cultural heritage institutions. The potential of NGBI’s should be explored further.