This article appeared in Fire Australia, Spring
2006.
Australia has about 250,000 volunteer firefighters but for the
past 30 years memberships have been declining. Fire agencies fear
that if the decline persists a shortage of volunteer firefighters
may emerge that degrades the provision of fire services.
The Bushfire CRC is carrying out joint research with fire
agencies from around Australia looking at the issues in both
recruiting and retaining volunteers. Volunteers have been an
integral part of the operations of fire agencies for many years but
empirical research is sparse, not in-depth, and largely confined to
the last decade.
This article focuses on two such Bushfire CRC projects: the
first on community members views about volunteering with the NSW
Rural Fire Service; the second looking at generational values held
by Country Fire Authority volunteers in Victoria.
Community views about being a volunteer
This research was commissioned by NSW Rural Fire Service
Volunteer Relations Branch and Region West to survey the community
to find out:
• What people knew about RFS
• What they thought of RFS
• Their interest in volunteering
• Their likelihood of volunteering
• Barriers and enablers to volunteering
All households in 29 communities throughout Region West were
surveyed using an anonymous questionnaire. The survey was intended
for community members who were not current volunteers with RFS at
the time - 1200 questionnaires were completed and returned. This
report focuses on the 1046 respondents who were not, and had never
been members of RFS or its predecessors.
Around 20 percent of respondents expressed interest in
volunteering with the RFS in a firefighting role, while 40 percent
expressed interest in a non-firefighting role.
Only about 1/3 of those expressing interest thought it was
likely that they would actually volunteer to join RFS in the next
12 months. Of those likely to volunteer for a firefighting role, 65
percent were male and 35 percent were female. Of those likely to
volunteer for a non-firefighting role, 40 percent were male and 60
percent were female.
The survey found that an interest in and the likelihood of
volunteering for a firefighting role declines with age and also
dips during the parenting and career establishment years. However,
an interest in and likelihood of volunteering for a
non-firefighting role shows minimal decline with age but still dips
during the parenting and career establishment years.
The barriers to
volunteering included:
· Lack of time (50%)
· Other priorities (45%)
· Sick / disabled / too old (35%)
· Various fears and concerns (30%)
· Child care (25%)
· Don’t need a local fire brigade (17%)
Some early recommendations for fire agencies include:
• Inform the community more about why fire services are
needed and the advantages of volunteer fire services.
• Minimise the time imposition on volunteer
firefighters.
• Aim for brigade memberships large enough to allow
adequate redundancy for turnouts.
• Inform the community about measures to mitigate harm or
financial loss to volunteers.
• Help brigades become more female-friendly.
• Help institute child-care arrangements for
volunteers.
Variations in motivation with age
Several social commentators propose that different
“generations” have different value systems that impact
on aspects of social behaviour, including volunteering. In
particular, it has been claimed that members of Generation Y
(generally regarded as those born between 1976 and 1991) are
relatively more self-oriented than previous generations.
An implication is that they are thus relatively less
community-oriented and more concerned with ‘what is in it for
me?’ when making decisions about whether or not to undertake
voluntary work, including emergency services volunteering. Given
the difficulties which Australasian volunteer-based fire agencies
have reported in recruiting volunteers, especially volunteers aged
18-34, claims about the self-interest of Generation Y have been
accorded a degree of plausibility. However, evidence that 18-34
year old potential fire service volunteers are indeed more
self-oriented individuals than older generations is, at best,
limited.
The present study was part of CFA’s New Volunteers Project
which involves surveying all new volunteers. The aim was to compare
the reported motivations for volunteering of new members aged
18-34, 35-44, and 45 plus years.
Survey returns from 455 new volunteers (311 men and 144 women)
were analysed. Participants were asked to rate the importance of
each of 10 potential reasons for becoming a CFA volunteer.
Ratings of the importance of the 10 items were analysed and
three clusters of motivations were identified:
- Self-oriented motivations (4 items).
- Safety-oriented motivations (4 items).
- Community-oriented motivations (2 items).
The ratings for the items in each cluster were summed to
generate for each volunteer three motivation scores: Self-,
Safety-, and Community-oriented motivation.
The means of these motivation scores for participants aged
18-34, 35-44, and 45 plus years were then compared.
There were no significant differences across the age groups for
mean scores on Safety-oriented and Community-oriented motivations.
However, there were significant differences across the three age
groups on Self-oriented motivations: Self-oriented motivations were
more important for those volunteers aged 18-34 years compared with
volunteers in the other two age groups. While the mean score was
somewhat higher for the 35-44 age group compared with the 45+
group, the apparent difference was not statistically
significant.
The picture which emerges from the data is that while
Self-oriented motivations (career advancement, skills development,
new challenges, and friendship opportunities) were indeed more
important on average for the 18-34 age group, volunteers in this
age group were just as motivated by Safety and Community concerns
as were the other two age groups.
While it may be that the difference in relative importance of
Self-oriented motivations reflects different generational values,
it may also be that they result simply from life-cycle factors:
people aged 18-34 are more likely to be in the early stages of
career and friendship network development compared with older
volunteers. Thus, it is not surprising that Self-oriented
motivations of 18-34 year old volunteers are reported as being
relatively more important compared with those of older
volunteers.
Regardless of the extent to which the findings reflect
generational values or life-cycle factors, they suggest that
potential volunteers aged 18-34 are somewhat more likely (compared
with older individuals) to be attracted by the personal benefits of
fire service volunteering: career enhancement, skills development,
the challenge, and opportunities for friendship and camaraderie.
This could, perhaps, be taken into account in general promotion of
CFA volunteering to the public, and in corporate communications to
the media.
By Jim McLennan and Adrian Birch, School of Psychological
Science, La Trobe University.
