When organising events volunteer participation is very important. The volunteers make the
machinery of the events go around and without them the experiences of the visitors might suffer.
When volunteering a person gives up their spare time in order to work for free. It takes a special
kind of commitment to make such a sacrifice. Therefore it is very important to get the right
people engaged as volunteers and this is a challenge for every event manager.
The aim of this thesis is to describe and compare the socio-demographic profiles of
people volunteering as well as their motives for volunteering at the Peace & Love music event
and Falun2015, the Ski World Championship. During the International World Ski
Championship, Falun2015 and the music festival Peace and Love there were many volunteers
active. These events are very different but they still have a lot of similarities; they are time
restricted, local to the area of Dalarna in central Sweden and they cater to people with special
interests.
The data has been collected through questionnaires handed out at the events. The data
from the Peace & Love festival is secondary and the data from Falun2015 has been collected and
analysed for this thesis specifically. It was found that in general the volunteers at Peace & Love
are younger whilst the age distribution amongst the Falun2015 volunteers is quite equally
distributed. This can later be reflected in the income level and the educational level, arguing that
younger people might increase these levels later in life. The top three motivations for
volunteering are very similar, this indicates that it is the personal interest that dictates which
event a volunteer engages in.
This thesis will help event managers reach out to the right population segment that fits the event
at hand. Further research should be done on weather the adaptation of focusing volunteer
recruitment to specific socio- and/or economic demographics has any influence on the number of
volunteers signing up.
2015.
Volunteers motivations, Falun2015, World Ski Championship, Peace and Love, Music Festival, Comparative study, Socio-demographics