Emerging Volunteer Traits and Helping Behavior Amid Flood Disaster

Abstract

Formal or informal volunteers are the bloodline of community response amid disasters. In contrast, informal volunteerism has recently gained significant international attention in disaster management literature due to its effectiveness in assisting flood-affected people. Drawing on the trait activation theory, the present research aims to explore the influence of emergent volunteers’ characteristics including compassion for others and a positive stress mindset on pro-social behaviors specifically helping behavior, while simultaneously considering the mediating role of resilience in these relationships. Using a snowball sampling approach, the data was gathered from a sample of 188 emergent volunteers who volunteered themselves amid the 2022 flood disaster in Sindh, Pakistan. Based on this dataset, the proposed model of this study was evaluated by employing the PLS-SEM approach to examine the complex relationship among variables. The results add to the theoretical understanding of trait activation theory and demonstrate its practical applicability. The findings revealed that the emergent volunteers’ characteristics significantly influence their helping behavior. Furthermore, resilience was found to be a pathway in the relationship between emergent volunteer characteristics and helping behavior. This is a novel study as it explores the emergent volunteers’ characteristics amid flood disasters using trait activation theory in the context of Pakistan.