Civic engagement motivations: Understanding why some do and some don’t

Abstract

This research explores what motivates citizens to participate on local government boards, committees, councils and commissions. We find that the everyday citizen’s definition of civic engagement includes more than service on government boards, committees, councils, and commissions. Participation in charitable and religious organizations is also identified as civic engagement. Personal affiliations are as motivating as the expectation of building social capital. Non-participants, on the other hand, suggest that they do not participate because they dislike the way elected officials behave and want to avoid a similar experience. Participants have positive, yet pragmatic, perceptions of the outcomes of civic engagement. The ability to generalize the results from this study is limited by the sampling strategy employed and number of respondents. In the conclusions we identify future research areas that can overcome the explorative nature of the study and hypothesize which can be confirmed in a follow on study with a larger and representative sampling.