Motivation Expression of Citizen Participation in Organizations of Citizen Society

Abstract

The article seeks to generalize the results of the dealingwith the motivation of citizens‘participation in civic societyorganizations in the aspect of collective motives.Participation is viewed as the act of society members’taking part in making decisions, and motivation is understoodas the determination of activity or stimulation to act. Thus,motivation being a secondary derivative with respect tomotive, its perception needs motives identification.Researchers state that “latent” participation potentialis characteristic to most citizens, however, only somescientists have asked who/what stimulate them to participate.The answer of the representatives of behavioral and socialsciences to the question why people take part in collectiveactivities is based on the theory of classical games(decisions): people act for the collective’s benefit onlywhen they are personally interested in this or that activity.Although self-interest is an important motivating factor,however, it is not the only one as most researchersconsider. There is less argument upon the issue of othermotives except self interest.The theme has been selected because motivationincluding the perception of civic participation (embracingboth political and non-political participation) and itsconceptual empirical study is not known by the authors,however, some separate areas, e.g. political, voluntary orsimply activity aimed at common benefit and motivationissues are often in the focus of discussions. The researchand its results are presented in this article. The research isbased on the triangularity conception combining a descriptivetheoretical analysis and an interactive interview as well asa written questioning and an expert interview as anadditional method.Quantitative research is based on Simmons andBirchall mutual stimuli theory (MST). This methodologyhas been used in investigating participation motivation inLithuania. Simonons and Birchall have been interested instimuli and approach to participation motivation. MST hascombined two sociopsychological motivation theories(individualistic and collectivistic). Rigita Tijūnaitienė, astudent of Doctoral Studies at Kaunas University ofTechnology, has carried out a research in this field.Methodology creators have suggested to researchcollective motives applying the scale of thirty collectiveapproaches, the latter being grouped into groups ofcommon values, mutual feelings and common aims. Afterthe validation procedure there have been twenty fivestimuli left in this subscale. Having summed up the resultsof the research, it could be stated hat motive identificationhelps to understand stimulating motives that are necessaryfor motivation recognition and construction of motivationincrease models. The research of civic participation inLithuania has, in some sense, proved the data received inother countries: active participants are the people who havetaken part in beneficial activity for 2 – 5 years. These peopleare not always leaders, however, they manage severalpeople, give orders, have constant jobs, are universitygraduates, live in regional centres and earn 1000 – 3000 Lt.Women dominate in such activity.It should be noted that collective motives are influencednot by all sociodemographic characteristics, the latterinfluencing various motives in a different way. Five clustersof participants have been indentified. These groups ofsimilar participants could be influenced by various motives.