Public Service Motivation and Volunteer Firefighters in Rural Environments

Volunteer firefighters serve their communities by offering life and property protection without compensation. With over 700 million volunteer firefighters in the United States, this population remains largely underrepresented in the public administration literature along with understanding public service motivation (PSM) in protective service industries. Using a sample of South Dakota volunteer firefighters, the study tested the applicability of PSM across a volunteer-based public service, the volunteer fire service. Through factor analysis, a viable PSM measure was confirmed across the sample consisting of the self-sacrifice and commitment to public interest dimensions. Compassion was notably unable to be confirmed as a dimension lending support to the line of research on the absence or low levels of compassion across similar public service occupational classifications considered to be highly intense such as police officers and emergency responders. The study identified regulatory, sociological, economic and risk industry factors in the fire service consistently considered to be negative in terms of volunteer firefighters’ experiences and participation levels. The influence of these four industry factors on PSM was tested along with potential factors to moderate the relationship. Overall, the regulatory, sociological, and economic industry factors were not found to negatively influence PSM. The risk factor of physical well-being did have a low-moderate negative influence on PSM and an assessment of being adequately trained positively moderated this relationship. Despite training mandates being framed negatively when discussing volunteer participation levels, this regulatory factor had a positive influence on PSM. Pragmatic recommendations center on the positive role of training. It is recommended that volunteer fire departments continue concentrated effort in this area including looking for ways to positively frame training requirements and maximize training offerings. Survey responses also reflected the ‘dark side’ of PSM particularly in terms of the mental well-being risks that exist for volunteer firefighters and their continuation to volunteer. In the absence of a universal PSM measure, continuing research across a variety of industries and occupational classifications within public service will aid in the identification of broader connections across the research and perhaps provide support for PSM measurements that theoretically unite.