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Labour market insecurity and volunteering in the European Union: policy suggestions for job security

Nunzia Nappo (Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy)
Damiano Fiorillo (Dipartimento di Studi Azientali ed Economici, Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, Napoli, Italy)
Giuseppe Lubrano Lavadera (Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita, della Salute e delle Professioni Sanitarie, Università degli Studi Link, Roma, Italy)

Journal of Economic Studies

ISSN: 0144-3585

Article publication date: 2 February 2024

Issue publication date: 30 August 2024

101

Abstract

Purpose

There is extensive literature on the determinants of job tenure insecurity. However, very little is known about the individual drivers of labour market insecurity. Additionally, while a piece of literature shows that volunteering improves workers' income, no study considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of labour market insecurity if they lost or resigned their jobs. Therefore, purpose of this paper is to study whether workers who volunteer are less likely to perceive labour market insecurity.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs data from the sixth European working conditions survey which provides a great deal of information on working conditions. For the empirical investigation, probit model as well as robustness analysis have been implemented.

Findings

Results show that employees who do voluntary activities have a greater likelihood of declaring perceived labour market insecurity, which is nearly 3 percentage points lower, than employees who do not volunteer. Findings suggest that governments need to improve the relationship between for-profit and non-profit sectors to encourage volunteering.

Originality/value

This is the first study which considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of “labour market insecurity”. Most of the studies on “labour market insecurity” do not focus on the workers individual characteristics but mainly on the labour markets institutional characteristics and welfare regimes differences.

Keywords

Citation

Nappo, N., Fiorillo, D. and Lubrano Lavadera, G. (2024), "Labour market insecurity and volunteering in the European Union: policy suggestions for job security", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 51 No. 7, pp. 1535-1553. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-12-2023-0717

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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