<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p>Rural communities have experienced significant changes in their social, economic and demographic structures, leading to an increased importance of volunteering. Such activities are related to traditional association structures, which seem to be declining in popularity. One of the current hopes for strengthening rural volunteering is digitalisation. This article examines the extent to which digitalisation has found its way into volunteering and how this is related to rural areas. It summarises the discourses on volunteering, rural areas and digitalisation and introduces a mixed-methods approach at the organisational level. Based on a nationwide survey and in-depth interviews with volunteers and experts, we present a digitalisation index to illustrate that digitalisation has found its way into rural volunteering, but not to the same extent everywhere. We suggest that the sparse use of distance-bridging digital tools is due to the structural peculiarities of rural voluntary organisations rather than stereotypical rural backwardness.</p>
</abstract>

Rural communities have experienced significant changes in their social, economic and demographic structures, leading to an increased importance of volunteering. Such activities are related to traditional association structures, which seem to be declining in popularity. One of the current hopes for strengthening rural volunteering is digitalisation. This article examines the extent to which digitalisation has found its way into volunteering and how this is related to rural areas. It summarises the discourses on volunteering, rural areas and digitalisation and introduces a mixed-methods approach at the organisational level. Based on a nationwide survey and in-depth interviews with volunteers and experts, we present a digitalisation index to illustrate that digitalisation has found its way into rural volunteering, but not to the same extent everywhere. We suggest that the sparse use of distance-bridging digital tools is due to the structural peculiarities of rural voluntary organisations rather than stereotypical rural backwardness.

A Voluntary Divide? Exploring the Role of Digitalisation in German Rural Volunteering

University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg

Research Associate at Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space

European Countryside

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Rural communities have experienced significant changes in their social, economic and demographic structures, leading to an increased importance of...

A Voluntary Divide? Exploring the Role of Digitalisation in German Rural Volunteering

Published Online: Apr 02, 2024

Page range: 43 - 63

Received: Mar 10, 2023

Accepted: Dec 22, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/euco-2024-0004

Keywords
Digitalisation, Voluntary work, Rural areas, Mixed-Methods, Associations

© 2024 Christoph Thewes et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

A Voluntary Divide? Exploring the Role of Digitalisation in German Rural Volunteering

Published Online: Apr 02, 2024

Page range: 43 - 63

Received: Mar 10, 2023

Accepted: Dec 22, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/euco-2024-0004

KeywordsDigitalisation, Voluntary work, Rural areas, Mixed-Methods, Associations

© 2024 Christoph Thewes et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Digitalisation, Voluntary work, Rural areas, Mixed-Methods, Associations