Perception versus Policy: Which Is More Important to Animal Welfare Volunteer Satisfaction?

There is a large body of work spanning decades examining the factors that lead to volunteer satisfaction. Much of this work has employed self-administered surveys to gather volunteers’ opinions or perceptions of factors important for satisfaction which inherently lie within the individual volunteer. Yet scholars have raised concerns about the validity of studies based on perceptions. This research builds on past work by the author by pairing a survey of animal welfare volunteers with one conducted with the executive directors of the shelters they volunteer with, addressing concerns about the validity of self-administered surveys. It concludes that perceptions appear to conform well to actual policies as described by shelter directors but that volunteer perceptions are most important for satisfaction. Volunteers whose perceptions of shelter policies differ from shelter director reports of policies are more likely to be dissatisfied with their experiences. The findings are critical to animal sheltering because they point to the importance of volunteer perceptions of shelter policies for satisfaction. To retain volunteers, animal welfare organizations need to be concerned about actual policies but also about volunteer perceptions of them.