Abstract: Volunteering is a typical form of prosocial behavior in which individuals devote their time, energy, and skills to benefit others and society. Volunteering plays a vital role in enhancing volunteers’ individual well-being and mental health, strengthening community governance, promoting social cohesion, fostering economic development, and advancing societal progress. Despite these well-documented benefits, China’s volunteering sector continues to face several practical challenges, including low public willingness to participate, limited sustainability of engagement, and high volunteer turnover rates. Thus, there is a crucial need to identify factors that can promote long-term and sustainable volunteer participation. Studies to date have primarily focused on enhancing volunteers’ motivation and role identity. In contrast, the role of habit formation in sustaining volunteering has received relatively little scholarly attention. Moreover, the relationships linking intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, context stability, and volunteering habits remain insufficiently understood. To address these gaps, three studies were conducted to systematically examine how intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and context stability influence volunteering habits.
In Study 1, data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 25 volunteers who exhibited strong volunteering habits. Thematic analysis identified three types of intrinsic rewards (meaningfulness, happiness, and self-worth) and three types of extrinsic rewards (honorary rewards, material rewards, and social support and recognition). In addition, five forms of context stability (time, place, activity type, people, and mood) were identified as well. These factors may be potential predictors of volunteering habits.
Study 2 built on these qualitative findings through the development of quantitative measures of intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and context stability. A total of 1, 572 community volunteers and 853 student volunteers were surveyed using these scales and the Self-Report Habit Index for Volunteering. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and context stability significantly and positively predicted the strength of volunteering habits. Furthermore, a significant interaction between intrinsic rewards and context stability was found, such that when context stability was low, the positive effect of intrinsic rewards on volunteering habits became stronger. In contrast, the interaction between extrinsic rewards and context stability was not significant. These patterns were consistent across both community and student volunteer samples.
To complement the cross-sectional nature of Study 2, Study 3 adopted a longitudinal design in which three waves of data were collected, separated by three-month intervals, from 623 volunteers. Cross-lagged panel modeling revealed that intrinsic rewards at Time 1 (T1) significantly predicted volunteering habits at Time 2 (T2), whereas extrinsic rewards at T1 only marginally predicted volunteering habits at T2, and context stability at T1 did not significantly predict volunteering habits at T2. Similarly, intrinsic rewards at T2 significantly predicted volunteering habits at Time 3 (T3), whereas extrinsic rewards and context stability at T2 did not exhibit significant predictive effects on volunteering habits at T3. Furthermore, the interaction between intrinsic rewards and context stability at T2 was significant, while the interaction between extrinsic rewards and context stability at T2 was only marginally significant. Specifically, when context stability at T2 was low, the positive effects of either intrinsic or extrinsic rewards at T2 on volunteering habits at T3 became stronger.
In conclusion, intrinsic rewards (meaningfulness, happiness, and self-worth), extrinsic rewards (honorary rewards, material rewards, and social support and recognition), and context stability (time, place, activity type, people, and mood stabilities) emerged as key factors that enhance the strength of volunteering habits. Of these factors, intrinsic rewards were the most stable and robust predictors. Moreover, both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards interacted with context stability to predict volunteering habits, indicating that rewards exert stronger effects when the volunteering context is less stable. These findings offer valuable practical implications for sustaining long-term volunteer engagement. For temporary or emergency volunteer activities (e.g., natural disaster relief and large-scale social events) when service time and location are unstable and consistent contextual cues are lacking, it becomes particularly important to provide diverse forms of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards (such as honorary recognition, material subsidies, or social acknowledgment). Such incentives can enhance volunteers’ willingness to participate, encourage their repeated engagement, and ultimately facilitate the formation of volunteering habits. At the theoretical level, these results extend habit theory to the volunteering domain and offer new insights into how reward structures and contextual features can jointly facilitate the maintenance of prosocial behaviors.

Key words: volunteering habits, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, context stability, volunteers