A Study On Urban Volunteer Participation Motivation From The Perspective Of Altruism

With the progress of urbanization in China,many community yards in a traditional pattern have been gradually replaced by modern apartment buildings,with a result of a tendency of alienated relationship between neighbors.Now,money worship and extreme individualism gain an increasingly influence while the virtues of helping others and altruistic practices lose its original domain,which places into the spotlight the growing contradictions between fast economic development and the lagged-behind social civilization.The current social situation calls for urgently a remedy system to mitigate the strike by acutely social reforming to social members' material and spiritual life.A volunteer service guided by altruistic,truehearted and passionate dedication will necessarily rise.Drawing on the favorable opportunity of Beijing Olympic Games,Urban Volunteer program undergoes a rapid development.Its advantages such as advanced managing system,extensive participation and effective service and so on assure it a more promising prospect than the other volunteer programs.As urban volunteer program is initiated by the government for the special event of Beijing Olympic Games,the participation motivations of the volunteers are of diversity and less stability.Therefore, aider the favorable drive of Beijing Olympic Games fades,we are confronted with the big problem in further developing the program:how to educate more citizens to form correct participation motivations and guide them to take part in the urban volunteer program,which is also the key challenge of generalizing the urban volunteer service into a civil volunteer practices.Urban volunteer service makes the altruism as its primary guiding principle.Urban volunteers hold diverse participation motivations because of the influence of the different interpretations of the term "altruism" between western and eastern culture.The controversy between altruism and egoism has for a long time been one of the focuses for Chinese Ethnics field.Therefore it is theoretically valuable to carry on a in-depth research on urban volunteers' participation motivations in the present social condition. Here the author makes a contributive study at the urban volunteers' participation motivations from the Perspective of Altruism.In the first part of this dissertation,the author gives a conclusion of the basic characteristics of the urban volunteer service according to the status quo of this program. In the second part,the author analyses the thoughts of altruism by a systematic study of the related works and theories by Marx,Angels,Lenin,Immanuel Kant and other western philosophies as well as those traditional Chinese ideas about altruism.The theories on altruism could be classified into three classes,namely self-serving altruism, reciprocal altruism and pure altruism.The third part does an empirical research on the Beijing Olympic Games Urban Volunteer Program and then categories the participation motivations into Ideals-driven,Reciprocity and learning-driven as well as self-serving-driven.The author also gives a detailed analyses each of the types according to different theories.The fourth part includes an comprehensive analysis of the factors impacting the participation motivations of urban volunteers.Then the dissertation suggests in line with the current stage of China's volunteer cause,that mutual interests should be advocated as the guiding motivation for urban volunteer service participates.At the same time,the author advises to improve the nurture of correct motivation among urban volunteers by creating a favorable environment of public opinion,enhancing the development of urban volunteer program and improving the education methods.