Motivation and motives for voluntarism are highly connected terms due to both having an important role in involving in a volunteer firefighting organization. The purpose of this thesis is to determine voluntarism, different motives for voluntarism, to define motivation and its purpose, to present voluntary firefighting and to find out how to attract people to join voluntary firefighting with the help of a survey. The goal of the thesis is to recognize what motivates people to do voluntary work within a firefighting organization. The bachelor's thesis is composed of a theoretical and general part. We have formed 3 hypotheses: There are different motives for younger and older generations to join a voluntary firefighting organization; Reputation is the lowest graded motive for voluntary work, while the welfare of others is the highest; Women are more motivated for voluntarism than men. In our survey we focused and measured the following motivational functions: social motive, enhancement, experience and knowledge, and values: care for the welfare of others, personal contribution to the society, and reputation. We tested our hypotheses with t-tests. With the results we determined, which motives, inspire/encourage to join voluntary firefighting. There is no difference between the younger and older population in joining the voluntary firefighting organisation. Even though there are more men that volunteer, there are no noticeable gender differences in the voluntary firefighting organisation. People primarily join with the purpose to help others in mutual assistance, while their reputation is not important to them. We found which motives encourage people to join in a voluntary firefighting organization. Voluntary fire departments can use our research to motivate people to become voluntary firefighters, to help each other out and to motivate their members to introduce their friends to firefighting activities.
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