Investigation of volunteer motivation levels of volunteer participants in sports organizations according to differences; The example of İstanbul marathons

In today's conditions, many volunteers take part in international and national sports organizations, therefore in the development of sports culture. The increasing rate of volunteering positively affects the success of organizations. For this reason, volunteers who have value in organizations are often the subject of research. As sports, which is a social institution between cultural and economic organization, is a structure that shows growth and development, it makes it necessary to re-evaluate considering the global conditions. Studies have shown that volunteering is related to motivation. For this reason, it was desired to examine whether the motivations of sports volunteers differ with different variables. For this purpose, in this study, the volunteers who took part in the Istanbul Marathon organizations organized with Istanbul Sports Events and Management Ticaret Anonim Şirketi were examined with the concept of volunteering and motivation for sports volunteering. In this direction, 600 volunteers who took part in the 2021 and 2022 Istanbul Marathons, determined by the relational screening method, were reached. 33 (Sport Volunteers Motivation Scale) developed by Strigas ve Jackson (2003) and Bang et al. (2009) 25 (Volunteer Motivation Scale for USO (International Sports Organizations) five-point Likert type scales adapted into Turkish and the adequacy in terms of validity and safety were determined by making use of the questionnaire. In addition, a 7-item Demographic Information Form was applied to the volunteers who cooperated within the scope of the research. The obtained data were tested using the SPSS 25.0 Program to test the relationships between the variables, correlation analysis, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U Test. As a result of the research, there is a significant difference between the motivation of sports volunteers and gender, age, marital status, branch of education, language level and monthly income; education level is denied. In the volunteer motivation scale for the USO, there was a significant difference between gender, age, marital status and foreign language level; There was no significant difference between education level, branch of education and monthly income. In addition, it was revealed that the volunteer participants had high motivation, and the motivation techniques applied were sufficient but could be improved.