A New Look at Job Demands, Resources, and Volunteers' Intentions to Leave: The Role of Work-Home Interference and Burnout

Volunteers' intention to leave is a relevant issue for organizations. Thus, it is critical to advance knowledge on its determinants. This study proposes that burnout symptoms mediate the relationship of work-home interference with leaving intentions. In addition, we hypothesize that job resources, namely organizational appreciation and organizational task support, buffer the positive indirect relationship of work-home interference with volunteers' leaving intentions through burnout symptoms. To this end, we rely on the job demands-resources theory, a theoretical framework first conceived for the paid work context that has been widely applied in volunteering settings. Consistent with our predictions, (moderated) mediation analyses on a sample of 220 Italian volunteers showed that only cynicism, and not emotional exhaustion, significantly mediated the positive relationship between work-home interference and leaving intentions and that organizational appreciation and task support weakened this indirect relationship. We discuss how these findings contribute to theory and practice for the volunteering sector.