• 한국노년학
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.777-800
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• 2012

This paper aims to estimate the effects of environmental variables on volunteering among older persons and decide relationships between independent and dependent variables. The thesis conceptually points out that the integrated theory of resources too much emphasizes the important roles of human, social and cultural capital, but overlooks the influences of ecological environments in explaining volunteering among the older persons. And the thesis tries to apply the general ecological theory of aging to explaining volunteering of older people together with resource frameworks, and to estimate the effects of ecological environment variables on volunteerism for senior citizens. Using a micro data of 2009 National Social Survey by Statistics Korea, the paper screens out 10,268 subjects who are believed to socially retire and be above 55 years older. The multiple OLS regression and binomial logistic regression techniques are used to estimate the effects of ecological environments and resources on volunteering. The analysis results show that all of environmental and resource variables are related to volunteering at the level of p<.000. This means that environmental variables have independent effects on the volunteerism, controlling for resource variables. This results suggest that both theories have empirical evidences in explaining volunteerism in Korea. Also, at the end of paper, theoretical and policy implications for practices and future studies are discussed.