The article seeks to generalize the results of the dealing with the motivation of citizens 'participation in civic society organizations in the aspect of collective motives. Participation is viewed as the act of society members' taking part in making decisions, and motivation is understood as the determination of activity or stimulation to act. Thus, motivation being a secondary derivative with respect to motive, its perception needs motives identification. Researchers state that "latent" participation potential is characteristic to most citizens, however, only some scientists have asked who/what stimulate them to participate. The answer of the representatives of behavioral and social sciences to the question why people take part in collective activities is based on the theory of classical games (decisions): people act for the collectives benefit only when 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 researchers consider. There is less argument upon the issue of other motives except self interest. The theme has been selected because motivation including the perception of civic participation (embracing both political and non-political participation) and its conceptual empirical study is not known by the authors, however, some separate areas, e.g. political, voluntary or simply activity aimed at common benefit and motivation issues are often in the focus of discussions. The research and its results are presented in this article. The research is based on the triangularity conception combining a descriptive theoretical analysis and an inlet-active interview as well as a written questioning and an expert interview as an additional method. Quantitative research is based on Simmons and Birchall mutual stimuli theory (MST). This methodology has been used in investigating participation motivation in Lithuania. Simonons and Birchall have been interested in stimuli and approach to participation motivation. MST has combined two sociopsychological motivation theories (individualistic and collectivistic). Rigita Tijunaitiene, a student of Doctoral Studies at Kaunas University of Technology, has carried out a research in this field. Methodology creators have suggested to research collective motives applying the scale of thirty collective approaches, the latter being grouped into groups of common values, mutual feelings and common aims. After the validation procedure there have been twenty five stimuli left in this subscale. Having summed up the results of the research, it could be stated hat motive identification helps to understand stimulating motives that are necessary for motivation recognition and construction of motivation increase models. The research of civic participation in Lithuania has, in some sense, proved the data received in other countries: active participants are the people who have taken part in beneficial activity for 2-5 years. These people are not always leaders, however, they manage several people, give orders, have constant jobs, are university graduates, live in regional centres and earn 1000-3000 Lt. Women dominate in such activity. It should be noted that collective motives are influenced not by all sociodemographic characteristics, the latter influencing various motives in a different way. Five clusters of participants have been indentified. These groups of similar participants could be influenced by various motives.
