The overlap of volunteering and leisure activities in young people's way of life

The demarcation between leisure activities and volunteering is not clearly visible and the divide between them is vague. We hypothesize that these fields are interrelated and are not mutually exclusive in peoples' way of life. In the empirical analysis, we use a survey with a nationwide and representative probability sample of young people in Hungary (Hungarian Youth 2020 Survey). In the first step, we carried out exploratory factor analysis based on the location of leisure activities. In accordance with the theory of cultural omnivores, we identified two factors of leisure time use: high-culture omnivore and recreational omnivore. In the second step, we applied a logistic regression model with young people's odds of volunteering as the dependent variable, and socio-demographic variables and the resulting factors as independent variables. The results are in accordance with our hypothesis about the compatibility of volunteering and leisure time use, as both resulting factors positively correlated with volunteering in the sample of young people we analysed. A further result is that the effect of the recreational factor was slightly more pronounced than the high-culture factor, which suggests the possibility of promoting young people's volunteering by emphasizing the social and recreational elements of volunteering activities.