How to Motivate Social Workers' Voluntary Political Participation? Testing a Civic Voluntarism Model in Korea

Background:

According to the International Federation of Social Workers, political interventions have been recognized as important social work practices to promote social justice and enhance human well-being. With rapidly changing and complex social problems, social workers’ political participation has received increasing attention in Korean society. Despite the importance of political participation, there is little understanding of significant factors to motivate social workers’ Voluntary Political Participation (VPP) as democratic citizens. Furthermore, little is known about how significant factors differ by the different types of VPP. We attempted to fill this research gap in Korea by employing the Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) that proposes three important domains to encourage individuals’ VPP.

Methods:

We analyzed the nationally representative data collected from 3,698 social workers in Korea in 2020. To measure the dependent variable of this study, social workers were asked to indicate whether they participated in the four types of VPP: (1) voting, (2) campaigning, (3) policy advocacy, and (4) protest activities. Based on the CVM, independent variables were selected and measured within the following domains: (1) social workers’ resources measured by information about politicians and work experience, (2) social workers’ psychological engagement measured by an interest in local and national politics, political efficacy that indicates beliefs about their political impact, and partisanship in a radical political ideology, and (3) recruitment networks measured by social workers’ membership in a political party. Logistic regression analyses were employed to examine the impacts of the three-domain variables on the four types of VPP, respectively, after controlling for other individual and work-related characteristics.

Results:

For the resource domain, social workers’ political information was a significant factor to motivate all types of VPP, especially greater for voting (OR=5.35) and policy advocacy (OR=3.48). However, their work experience was significantly associated with only voting (OR=.99) and campaigning (OR=1.00). For the psychological engagement domain, social workers’ interest in politics was a stronger factor for all types of VPP although its effect was greater for voting (OR=1.65) and campaigning (OR=1.90). Political efficacy was a significant factor for policy advocacy (OR=1.21) and protest activities (OR=1.2). When social workers had a radical political ideology, they were more likely to engage in VPP, especially protest activities (OR=1.62). For the recruitment network domain, social workers’ membership in a political party significantly increased all types of VPP, except for voting.

Conclusions:

This study contributes to existing knowledge on social workers’ political participation, which is an integral part of the social work profession. Consistent with the main principles of the CVM, many factors within the resources, psychological engagement, and recruitment network domains were significantly associated with their VPP although the effects varied across the different types of VPP. This finding implies that it is important to develop effective strategies tailored to promote specific VPP activities. For example, political efficacy is particularly needed to increase social workers’ more active and professional participation in political activities, such as policy advocacy and protest activities. Future research should focus on exploring organizational-, institutional-, and community-level factors that facilitate social workers’ VPP.