Literature Review - Linking Volunteering and Social Cohesion: Causal Evidence in the UK and Beyond

This review, conducted with Belong for the UK DCMS (Department for Digital,Culture, Media and Sport) systematically assesses the academic and grey literatures on the relationship between social cohesion (including social capital) and volunteering. It first considers definitions and ways of evaluating cohesion and volunteering, then examines evidence on how each can influence the other. The review also considers the role of relevant demographic factors in volunteering and barriers to volunteer recruitment. Evidence is drawn from a broad literature focusing primarily on evidence in the US and UK from the year 2000 onwards to determine both what may be generalisable and what might be specific to different contexts. From an initial trawl of over 400,000 items of evidence, we identified 101 that could directly address the causal relationships between volunteering and cohesion. We conclude that there is a bi-directional causal relationship, that the impact of formal volunteering is greater than that of informal volunteering on social cohesion, and that barriers to either cohesion or volunteering may adversely affect the other.