National wealth and thermal climate as predictors of motives for volunteer work

A voluntary worker may have both self-serving and altruistic motivations for helping, which may be positively or negatively linked together. Multilevel analyses of World Values Survey data, representatively sampled from 13,584 inhabitants of 33 countries, uncover a pattern of cross-cultural differences in balancing these self- and other-directed helping motivations. A voluntary worker's self-serving and altruistic motivations tend to be positively linked in higher income countries with uncomfortably cold or hot climates, unrelated in higher and lower income countries with comfortable climates and in lower income countries with uncomfortably hot climates, and negatively linked in lower income countries with uncomfortably cold climates. The findings are integrated into existing demands - resources theories as well as past research of helping and altruism on all six inhabited continents.