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Community Attachment, Communication Mediation, and Nonprofit Participation: An Integrated Community Communication Approach

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Abstract

Nonprofit participation in the form of giving and volunteering has long been viewed as the building blocks of participatory democracy. Yet, prior research has rarely treated nonprofit participation as a distinctive form from the general construct of civic participation. Extending Communication Mediation Model, we examine nonprofit participation behaviors within community-based communication possesses. We use structural equation modeling to investigate the paths of influence among community attachment variables, nonprofit-specific media use and discussion, and individuals’ volunteering and giving behaviors. Results highlight the importance of nonprofit-specific discussion in (1) directly promoting giving and volunteering behaviors (2) mediating the influence of nonprofit-specific traditional media use, and (3) translating community attachment into greater giving and volunteering activities. Different community and communication mechanisms are identified to predict nonprofit giving versus volunteering.

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Notes

  1. According to Eisinga et al. (2013), a more appropriate reliability coefficient for two-item scale is the Spearman-Brown statistics rho, as opposed to the Cronbach’s alpha for multiple-item measures.

  2. To assess how the current measures (two separate constructs of giving and volunteering) compared to a single composite of nonprofit participation empirically, a post hoc analysis was conducted by fitting the same path model using the composite measure as the only exogenous variable. Compared to the findings as discussed above, sense of community remained a significant and positive predictor of nonprofit participation, but the significant association between nonprofit-specific media use and nonprofit participation dissolved completely. Such divergence, to some extent, suggests that using a single dimensional measure of nonprofit participation may mask the weak, yet still significant association between media use and giving behaviors.

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  1. Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston, 3347 Cullen Blvd, Houston, TX, 77004, USA

    Wenlin Liu

  2. School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Allen Hall, 1275, Eugene, OR, 97403, USA

    Seungahn Nah

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  1. Wenlin Liu
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Liu, W., Nah, S. Community Attachment, Communication Mediation, and Nonprofit Participation: An Integrated Community Communication Approach. Voluntas 33, 269–283 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00276-9

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