The global COVID-19 health pandemic has put extraordinary pressure on already fiscally strapped local governments. As local jurisdictions search for strategies to meet rising service expectations with declining resources, use of volunteers would seem to offer significant advantages. This study examines the involvement of volunteers to deliver services in all county governments in one U.S. state, as well as the factors that explain the extent of use of this service approach. Our analysis is based on information collected from a survey of county government officials working in 10 service domains, supplemented by demographic and other data drawn from a variety of sources. To arrive at valid estimates of volunteer involvement in the delivery of county services, we introduce a novel methodology that corrects our survey data for possible sample and response biases based on a calibration estimator using auxiliary information. The results of our inquiry reveal a higher use of volunteers to deliver services by county governments than suggested by the literature. The findings show, moreover, that counties with higher per capita income, greater percentage of residents attaining a bachelor’s degree or higher formal education, and lower unemployment are likely to involve volunteers in the delivery of more services, as are those county governments with greater per capita spending and per capita property tax revenues. These results have important implications in regard to the capacity of local governments to use volunteers, which we treat in the Discussion.

全球COVID-19卫生大流行给已经财政拮据的地方政府带来了巨大压力。随着当地司法管辖区寻求在资源减少的情况下满足不断增长的服务期望的策略，使用志愿者似乎具有很大的优势。这项研究考察了美国一个州所有县政府中志愿人员提供服务的参与程度，以及解释了使用这种服务方法的程度的因素。我们的分析基于对在10个服务域中工作的县政府官员进行的调查收集的信息，并辅以人口统计数据和从各种来源获得的其他数据。为了得出志愿者参与县服务提供的有效估计，我们介绍了一种新颖的方法，该方法可基于使用辅助信息的校准估算器来校正调查数据中可能存在的样本和响应偏差。我们的调查结果表明，与文献所建议的相比，县政府更多地使用了志愿者来提供服务。此外，研究结果表明，人均收入较高的县，获得本科学历或更高的正规教育的居民比例较高，以及失业率较低的县，以及那些人均收入较高的县政府，都可能使志愿者参与更多的服务。人均支出和人均财产税收入。这些结果对于地方政府使用志愿人员的能力具有重要意义，我们在讨论中会谈到。