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N. 2 (2025): Social participation and contemporary scenarios: transformations, representations, and psychosocial impacts in territories

The Impact of Modern Volunteering on Local Community Experiences: The Moderating Role of Volunteering-related Ambivalence

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/psc2025oa21763
Inviata
22 dicembre 2025
Pubblicato
30-12-2025

Abstract

Modern volunteerism has undergone a broad transformation, which has made episodic and online forms stem. This study investigates (a) how traditional, episodic, and online volunteering affect volunteers’ local community experiences – meant as Sense of Community (SoC), Sense of Re-sponsible Togetherness (SoRT), and social generativity – and (b) the moderating role of volunteering-related ambivalence in this. The results show that only traditional volunteering has a positive impact on SoC, while online volunteering harms social generativity. Ambivalence plays a complex role: it weakens the positive impact of traditional volunteerism on SoC, yet it reverses and strengthens the effect on social generativity when it comes to online one-making it positive. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

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