Civic engagement profiles and youth membership in associations: implications for marketing in the nonprofit sector
Keywords:
youth participation, membership associations, civic engagement, self-selection, socializationAbstract
This paper presents the results from a survey on Spanish youths intended to analyse the relationship between civic engagement and participation in voluntary associations and, by this mean, providing some insights to improve the recruitment and retention processes of active young people. Respondents were compared in four dimensions of civic engagement (civic duty, civic skills, social connection and civic participation) and principal components analysis and multivariate analysis of variance were used to validate the measures of the study and perform the group comparisons. Results support previous research on the causes and consequences of voluntary membership. In this sense, it is concluded that, beyond the potential impacts of voluntary membership on youth civic engagement, civic-minded young people with similar civic profiles are more likely to be recruited into associations and, accordingly, socialization effects emerge after a preceding selection, once members are confirmed and further stimulated in their initial goals.
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