Shaping Identity: Older Adults’ Perceived Community Volunteering Experiences in Shanghai

Abstract

This study explores elderly volunteers’ identity during their experiences volunteering in the community in Shanghai. Purposive and snowball sampling strategies were used to recruit elderly volunteers to participate in semi-structured, in-depth interviews ( N = 40). Participants developed new identities during volunteering. Through volunteering, they also continued to sustain their professional identities and Chinese Communist Party identities. Volunteering had both positive and negative implications for participants’ identities. Our findings suggest that volunteering strengthened participants’ role identity and social identity to better adapt to life after retirement. Volunteering also helped participants achieve identity continuity. This study offers nuanced sociocultural context to current elderly volunteering research and informs tailored policy and practice development in urban China.