Intention patterns predicting college students' volunteer service participation

Volunteer service activities of college students are crucial for universities to educate students on civic engagement. Education laws and scientific methods must be employed to enhance college students' willingness to volunteer and actively participate in volunteer service activities. Based on literature collection and collation, this study takes the theory of planned behaviour as the basic framework, includes the dimension of "cognition," designs the questionnaire, and discusses the relationship among the relevant factors that affect the volunteer service behaviour of college students. Cognition, defined as understanding volunteerism's personal and social benefits, positively predicted attitudes, norms, and control, but not directly behaviour. A sample survey of Chinese college students and a correlation analysis of effective questionnaires demonstrate that college students' volunteer service attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control positively impact volunteer service behaviour intention, which can predict volunteer service behaviour. College students' cognition of volunteer service significantly and positively impacts their attitude toward it, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control but does not directly impact their volunteer service behaviour. Thus, the following aspects must be improved: guiding attitude, creating atmosphere, improving mechanisms, innovating projects, strengthening cognition, and implementing practical education. The findings of this study can help colleges and universities to clarify the impact mechanism of college students' volunteer service cognition on their volunteer service behaviour. It contributes new evidence on optimising the student environment to engage youth in building community well.