Volunteering, Civic Engagement, and Generativity

Volunteering and civic engagement function as important antecedents and consequences of generativity across many stages of the lifespan. This chapter reviews and discusses theorizing and research on the various roles of generativity in community engagement and volunteering. It investigates the intertwined relations of volunteerism, civic engagement, and generativity from the perspectives of three key roles of generativity. First, generative concern as an individual propensity predicts volunteering and community-oriented actions (i.e., civic prosocial behavior). Second, generative commitment (setting generative goals and striving to achieve them) can serve as the linking mechanism between individual traits and civic prosocial behavior. Third, it examines a burgeoning area of research on how the experience of engaging in civic prosocial behavior can increase generativity. Lastly, it discusses types of motivation that may underlie generativity and the ways that these motivations can contribute to developing interventions to promote prosocial behavior and civic engagement.