- Title
- The benefits from and barriers to participation in civic environmental organisations in South Africa
- Creator
- Higgins, Olivia, Shackleton, Charlie M
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2015
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/180813
- Identifier
- vital:43648
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-015-0924-6"
- Description
- With growing global public awareness of a wide range of conservation and environmental issues, environmental volunteerism is increasing. In order to attract and retain volunteers, it is useful to understand what benefits they hope for as well as the barriers that hinder their participation. Here we examine the benefits from and barriers to participation in 26 conservation and environmental civic organisations in South Africa, categorised by their primary mission as botanical, wildlife or green. Questionnaires were sent to volunteers on the mailing list of each civic organisation (and 66 responses received), supplemented with direct interviews with key staff and five focus group discussions. There were differences in the perception of benefits obtained and barriers experienced by volunteers between the three groups. Respondents from botanical and green civic organisations rated enjoyment of the task as the primary benefit, whereas the most common response amongst wildlife organisation volunteers was a higher level of life satisfaction. Lack of time was a major barrier across all groups, whilst lack of communication between organisers and volunteers was mentioned frequently by volunteers in wildlife and green organisations. The mean number of hours offered per volunteer was significantly higher amongst wildlife organisations than either botanical or green ones, but for all three, the value of volunteer contributions was, at several millions of rand annually, substantial. There was no relationship between the number of perceived benefits and the number of hours volunteered. This study indicates that motivations and barriers differ amongst volunteers, which is important to acknowledge in attracting and optimising the contributions of conservation and environmental volunteers.
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (16 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Springer Link
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Biodiversity and Conservation, Higgins, O. and Shackleton, C.M., 2015. The benefits from and barriers to participation in civic environmental organisations in South Africa. Biodiversity and conservation, 24(8), pp.2031-2046, Biodiversity and Conservation volume 24 number 8 p. 2031 2017 1572-9710
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the SpringerLink Terms of Use Statement ( https://link.springer.com/termsandconditions)
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
RU DST/NRF SARChI for Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods
Shackleton, Charles Michael (Distinguished Prof)
RU Department of Environmental Science
SDG 16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
SDG 15. Life On Land
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | The benefits from and barriers to participation in civic environmental organisations in South Africa.pdf | 518 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |