Based on research on how volunteering contributes to people’s subjective well‐being, our research uses the case of the Peace & Love festival in Borlänge, Sweden, the largest city festival (focusing on music and societal cohesion) in Sweden, to test a number of hypotheses. Previous studies on the festival’s audience have found a positive correlation between individual’s subjective well‐being and their voluntary engagements. Does this relationship hold also for the volunteers?
Moreover, the festival on its own calls for about 5.000 volunteers. Their contribution, in traditional economic terms makes up to about 20 percent of the festival’s net turnover and seems to be necessary to make ends meet financially. The festival brings an opportunity to volunteer, with its positive effects of well‐being, increased social and cultural capital, but it may also have a downside. For a teenager the weekly pass is quite pricy and so far sold out before the festival starts, some people only sign up as volunteers to ascertain them access to the festival. According to the festival management such participants are more demanding to supervise than “voluntary volunteers”. However the societal return may be even larger considering the introduction of the involuntary volunteers into the world of volunteering. In this paper we also study motives for volunteering in relationship to both the individual and the festival management perspectives.