Categorization of Volunteers and their Motivation in Catastrophic Events

Abstract

In catastrophic events, the potential of help has grown through new technologies. Voluntary help has many forms. Within this paper different categories of voluntary help are suggested. Those categories are based on properties like organizational structures, helping process, kind of prosocial behavior and many more. A focus is clearly on the organizational structure and motivational aspects of helper groups. Examples are given for each category. The categorization’s aim is to give a brief overview of possible properties a group of system users could have.