Working for Nothing and Being Happy. The Determinants of the Satisfaction of Volunteers and Paid Workers

This essay attempts to understand the factors determining the satisfaction that volunteers derive from their own activity, and then to compare them with those determining the satisfaction of paid workers. The novelty of this approach is that volunteers and paid workers are compared in the same data-set (from Italy), using the same measure of the rewards and reported satisfaction for both types of workers. The main findings are that volunteers are individuals who perform an activity which gives them satisfaction for a number of different reasons, and that, while the determinants of satisfaction are not exactly the same for volunteers and paid workers, both of them attach special consideration to the users’ well-being.