Secondary school students' motivation to participate in environmental conservation volunteer program
The environmental conservation volunteer program provides secondary school students the opportunity to connect to their environment and contribute to its natural heritage conservation. However, there is a lack of school students participating in environmental conservation volunteer programs. This...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/105564/1/WONG%20LI%20JUAN%20-%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | The environmental conservation volunteer program provides secondary school students
the opportunity to connect to their environment and contribute to its natural heritage
conservation. However, there is a lack of school students participating in environmental
conservation volunteer programs. This is because they perceived these programs to be
irrelevant to them as most times the programs cater to volunteers who are adults and
senior citizens. Hence, many existing environmental conservation volunteer program is
ill-fitting to school students’ motivation.
A qualitative research was conducted to explore the motivation of secondary school
students who had volunteered in an Environmental Conservation Volunteer Program
(ECVP) in the state of Perak. Data was primarily gathered using focus group discussions
to provide exploratory and descriptive findings of school students’ motivation,
opportunity and ability to volunteer in the ECVP. The focus group discussion was
conducted at the end of the study, using questions developed based on the Motivation-
Opportunity-Ability (MOA) theoretical framework. The group discussions involved
forty-five secondary school students who had participated actively in the program. All
discussions were audio-recorded and analyzed thematically using a constant comparative
method and critical incident analysis to identify recurring themes across the dataset. The
observation was used to triangulate findings from the group discussions.
Seven themes emerged from the analysis to describe secondary school students’ intrinsic
and extrinsic motivation to participate in the ECVP. The intrinsic motivation were gain
new experiences and knowledge, seeking altruistic value, personal enhancement, and the
love of nature, while the extrinsic motivation were the influences of social norms and
goal-orientation. The study identified the barriers and facilitators to describe the
situational conditions that influenced students’ actual volunteering participation and their
continuous involvement in the program. Social factors, transportation and duration of the
program have been identified as the barriers to their continued participation in the program. The desire to receive certificate, parents’ approval, good mentors and
instructors, activities which fit their interest and food are the facilitators which enhanced
their motivation to participate in the program. The implementation process of the ECVP
that is cyclical and repetitive had enhanced their ability to perform the tasks, which
encouraged their actual participation and continuos involvement in the program. The
volunteering experiences also offer various benefits to the volunteers as they ride through
the volunteering program's challenges and learning experiences.
Understanding secondary school student’s motivation enables an organization to design
an ECVP that is in line with their motivation to encourage their actual participation. The
barriers and facilitators identified to school students’ participation would also help
organizations take important measures to increase students’ actual participation and
continuous involvement in the ECVP and ensure students gained benefits from their
participation. |
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