REPLY Volunteer Dynamics (SD6324)

[SDMAIL wakeland]

Posted by  wakeland at pdx.edu

Megan Hopper asked if anyone has seen SD research about volunteering.

My immediate thought when I read her post was that I would use a  
modified epidemic model, but then I thought that this was so obvious  
that I decided not to reply, figuring someone else more articulate  
than me would mention it.  When no one did, I wondered if my initial  
reaction was offbase.

I don't think so.  The stocks would represent groups of people:   
Potential volunteers, Active volunteers, Burned Out/Inactive  
Volunteers or whatever.  The idea would be to try to model the flows  
between these stocks, perhaps largely dependent upon the contacts  
between people in this different groups (propotional to the product of  
the populations of each pair of groups).  Each contact would have a  
likelihood of resulting in someone deciding to volunteer,to stop  
volunteering, or whatever.

However, I have not actually seen any research on this.

Wayne Wakeland
Systems Science Program
Portland State University 
Posted by  wakeland at pdx.edu
posting date  Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:29:35 -0800