Career volunteering in commodity-intensive serious leisure: Motorsport events and their dependence on volunteers/amateurs

The primary motivation for leisure volunteering is the desire to have a lei sure experience. However, sustained involvement in volunteer work ("career volunteering") amateurism and hobbyist activities share characteristics of "serious leisure" (Stebbins, 1997b), and over time, such enthusiasts come t o share a social world (Unruh, 1979; Stebbins, 1997a). Stebbins developed t he serious leisure model with three interdependent components: professional s, amateurs and publics (the P-A-P system) to analyze the social worlds of amateurs. Yoder (1997) modified this system by substituting "commodity agen ts," hybrid forms of "professional/commodity agents" and "amateur/publics" in Stebbin's model. The present research considers the relevance of Yoder's work for a study of volunteers/amateurs at the Queensland 500 V8 SuperCar Race who were surveyed about the nature of their volunteer activity within motorsport, and their involvement in motorsport as amateurs. Results showed these volunteers are career volunteers with a unique ethos setting them ap art from both marginal volunteers and motorsport fans. They are also engage d in amateur motorsport related activity and participate in motorsport orga nizations, showing degrees of involvement in the social world of motorsport . Patterns of amateur engagement and organizational participation were anal yzed in relation to volunteer behavior. These findings support the idea tha t the volunteers represent a hybrid "career volunteer/amateur" within this form of commodified leisure, a further variant on Stebbin's original model. The research also considers the question of potential conflict between car eer volunteers/amateurs and the agents of commodified leisure. This explora tory study indicates a number of areas for further research into the role o f career volunteers/amateurs in a commodified serious leisure activity.