Resilience in volunteer animal care professions : does the stress shield model fit?

Volunteer animal carers experience adverse wellbeing outcomes through individual, team and workplace factors (Hill et al., 2020; Reese et al., 2021). This study uses the Stress Shield Model of Resilience (SSM; Paton et. al., 2008) and is a replication and extension of the study by Cushing and colleagues (2022). It was hypothesised that predictor variables - problem and emotion-focused coping, conscientiousness and emotional-stability, team and leader-member exchanges, workplace demands and workplace resources - would have significant relationships with outcome variables - job satisfaction, personal growth and adaptive capacity, mediated by empowerment, as predicted by the SSM. Australian volunteer animal care workers (N=221) completed an online self-report survey measuring the predictor and outcome variables. Significant positive relationships included empowerment with problem-focused coping, emotional-stability and workplace demands; job satisfaction and personal growth with leader-member exchange; and adaptive capacity with conscientiousness and emotional-stability. Significant negative relationships included job satisfaction with workplace demands and problem-focused coping; and adaptive capacity with emotion-focused coping. Empowerment was found to mediate emotional-stability and job satisfaction, and emotional-stability and personal growth. Key findings indicate volunteers are empirically different to employees, and neither the SSM, or a revised model by Cushing and colleagues (2022), adequately explain resilience in volunteer animal care workers.