Engagement plays a key role for most organizations. Establishing close relationships with consumers and other stakeholders - thus promoting their loyalty and participation in the value creation process – has become an element of competitive advantage. Extant literature has focused consumer-brands relationships in commercial contexts; yet, when it comes to non-commercial or non-profit contexts - where communities of decidedly engaged individuals voluntarily invest their time and energy to a cause – research is still in its infancy. This study sets out to understand how non-profit organizations (NPO) can generate a sense of engagement among volunteers and which volunteers’ behaviours - associated with that psychological state – entice value co-creation with NPO. Group interviews were carried out with volunteers to gain insights on drivers and outcomes of Volunteer Engagement (VE). Value congruence between volunteers and NPO, a sense of community, as well as perceptions of competence and autonomy, were identified as drivers of VE. The study further validated the impact of VE not only on somewhat predictable outcomes, such as NPO loyalty and advocacy, but also on the co-creation of value with NPO through the recruitment of new volunteers and the development of new ideas for service innovation.

参与对于大多数组织都起着关键作用。与消费者和其他利益相关者建立紧密的关系，从而提高他们的忠诚度和参与价值创造过程，已成为竞争优势的要素。现有文献集中于商业环境中的消费者-品牌关系。但是，当涉及非商业或非营利性环境时，那些坚定参与的个人社区自愿将自己的时间和精力投入到事业上，研究仍处于起步阶段。这项研究旨在了解非营利组织（NPO）如何在志愿者之间产生一种参与感，以及哪些志愿者的行为（与该心理状态相关）可以吸引与NPO共同创造的价值。与志愿者进行了小组访谈，以获取有关驾驶员参与和参与志愿活动（VE）的见解。志愿者与非营利组织之间的价值一致性，社区意识以及对能力和自治的感知被认为是VE的驱动力。该研究进一步验证了VE不仅对某些可预见的结果（如NPO忠诚度和倡导）的影响，而且还通过招募新的志愿者和开发服务创新的新思想，对NPO与NPO共同创造价值产生了影响。