Purpose: The paper studies the simultaneous effect of formal and informal volunteering on self-perceived individual health across nine European countries while controlling, among other things, for socioeconomic characteristics and social and cultural participation. Design/methodology/approach:...

This paper presents the first empirical assessment of the causal relationship between social capital and health in Italy. The analysis draws on the 2000 wave of the Multipurpose Survey on Household conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on a representative sample of the population...

This paper studies the factors that determine unpaid labour in a voluntary organization, a political party and a trade union. Official data has been taken from Indagine Multiscopo sulla Famiglia, Aspetti della Vita Quotidiana (1997), of the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). In...

The public health literature on the detrimental effects of social isolation has shown that the quantity of social connections is positively correlated with individual health. Drawing on pooled cross-sectional data, we test this hypothesis on a representative sample of the Italian population. Our...

Economic theory explains the supply of volunteering alternatively as an ordinary consumer good or an investment good. This paper provides a simultaneous approach, considering both objectives, by using the psychological distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, in order to...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether social relations are associated with the health of workers. It uses two types of health status measures – self-reported and more objective health – and it considers two types of social relationships: individual social relations,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of three domain satisfactions, focusing on volunteer work supplied in official non-profit service associations. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses the data from the Multiscopo Survey of Households (MSH) conducted...