Designing and providing a model for volunteer retention in student Sports: Case study of sports volunteers of Tehran province universities

Nowadays the importance of voluntary members is revealed for organization's managers and sport events. Various organizations are competing in employing the volunteers. Therefore, managers are facing significant challenges to retention volunteers. The aim of this study was to design and defining a model for volunteers’ retention in student sports of state universities in Tehran. The research is correlational and field study. The population of this study was the whole students that had a corporation with physical education offices of state universities in Tehran (N=338). The stratified random sampling was used. According to the method of structural equations modeling 286 people were chosen as volunteers. In order to collect data, the researcher used psychological empowerment scale (PES), organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ), questionnaire of volunteer motivation for sport (MVFIS), job satisfaction (JSQ), organizational socialization (OSQ), Questionnaire of intention of sport volunteer questionnaire (ICQ) and demographic characteristics questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling with emphasis on the AMOS/18 software were used for data analysis. Results showed that the organizational variables of empowerment (0.57), organizational commitment (0.18), motivation (0.44) and job satisfaction (0.4) have a positive and significant effect on intention to continue volunteer work, but socialization has a negative and significant effect (-0.92). Generally, the organizational variables have an important role in retention the volunteers. By relying on the organizational variables, managers could improve the returning of volunteers.