Introduction

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars and public health officials had already been warning of a potential "loneliness pandemic", with loneliness among older adults identified as a significant public health concern (Gerst-Emerson and Jayawardhana 2015). Loneliness refers to the multifaceted set of feelings, cognitions and adverse emotions that arise when a person's social needs are not being met in terms of quantity or quality of social relationships (Campagne 2019; Ernst and Cacioppo 1999; Hawkley and Cacioppo 2010). It is important to note that loneliness, the perceived subjective experience of social isolation (Campagne 2019; Hawkley et al. 2009) is different from objective social isolation, which is usually defined as a measure of network size or the objective absence of interactions with family and friends (Courtin and Knapp 2017; Victor et al. 2000). Thus, in our study, we refer to loneliness as this evaluation of the match between the quantity and quality of existing relationships and one’s relationship desires (Cacioppo and Hawkley 2009; De Jong-Gierveld and Havens 2004).

Lonely is no trivial matter, it is considered a public health problem that can have adverse effects on both the physical and mental health of adults (Coyle and Dugan 2012). Loneliness has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (Valtorta et al. 2018), depression (Domènech-Abella et al. 2021), cognitive decline (Boss et al. 2015), frailty (Kojima et al. 2022), and even premature mortality (Kristensen et al. 2022). The COVID-19 outbreak led many countries to implement stay-at-home policies and physical distancing measures to contain the spread of the disease. The focus of these measures was to protect older people, who, if infected, are more vulnerable to a severe disease progression or even death (Posch et al. 2020). However, these measures seem to have worsened pre-existing feelings of loneliness among adults (Arpino et al. 2022; Atzendorf and Gruber 2022; Bu et al. 2020; Krendl and Perry 2021).

Participating in volunteering activities in old age can be an effective way to alleviate feelings of loneliness (Carr et al. 2018; Cho and ** behaviors that individuals offer willingly (Callow 2004). However, volunteering is not only a behavior motivated by altruism. It can be motivated by a variety of reasons (Snyder et al. 2000). For example, some people aim to express prosocial and humanitarian values through action; others seek to learn more about the world, people, and their own abilities; some volunteer to feel fulfilled; others seek to distract themselves from their own problems; others want to strengthen ties with others; and finally, some seek paid employment opportunities (Stukas et al. 2016).

Older people may feel lonely due to a variety of factors that can be addressed by participating in volunteer activities. For example, loneliness may occur due to unmet standards of social relationships and social activity (Tesch-Romer and Huxhold 2019). Engaging in social activities is considered to help reduce these feelings of loneliness, as it promotes a sense of belonging (Niedzwiedz et al. 2016; Sirven et al. 2015). Also, older people are particularly vulnerable to feelings of loneliness due to a lack of meaningful role and status in family and society. Older adults may experience a loss of social roles throughout their lives due to retirement, changes in family structure (e.g., becoming a widowed) or experience physical limitations (Singh and Misra 2009). Therefore, engaging in volunteer work is considered to provide an opportunity for develo** a new social role thus sharing of skills and life experiences (Chambre 1984; Papa et al. 2019) and promoting a sense of reciprocation and purpose of life (Lee 2023).

Research has suggested that volunteering during the COVID-19 could improve some psychosocial out- comes. For example, Sin et al. (2021) used convenient sampling from Canada and the USA and found that older people who engaged in informal support had lower levels of anger and frustration during the COVID-19 pandemic. In another study, Chan et al. (2021) examined a sample of older people from China and discovered that one specific volunteering activity, assisting others in purchasing daily necessities, was associated with fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms. However, these studies are cross-sectional, used convenient sampling. Moreover, although anger, anxiety and depression are related to loneliness, they are not the same concept. So more specific investigation addressing loneliness is need.

To our knowledge, only one study specifically investigates the effect of volunteering on feelings of loneliness in older people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study found that the disruption of volunteering since COVID-19 has had a negative impact on volunteers. Also, they found that the individuals who stopped volunteering were more likely to report feeling lonely compared to those who still volunteering (Biddle and Grey 2021). Even though this study is a great contribution to the literature, presents some limitations. The study of Biddle and Grey (2021) is focused only on a sample of people from Australia, so the results of this study cannot be generalized to other countries. Also, even the study has a longitudinal design, it does not include pre-COVID data on loneliness, so they only can achieve if those who stopped volunteering were far more likely to say that they felt lonely at least some of the time than those who remained as volunteers. Lastly, this study only examined the early stages of the pandemic (April 2020- April 2021). Therefore, the main objective of our study is to explore the potential protective benefits of volunteering on feelings of loneliness before, during, and after the initial months of the pandemic in engagement on feelings of loneliness in a representative sample of adults aged 50 years and older from Europe and Israel, across three consecutive waves of the SHARE project (one before the pandemic and two during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Volunteering in old age may help individuals alleviate loneliness. Nevertheless, due to new social distancing regulations implemented by governments during the pandemic, but traditional forms of volunteering have also become more challenging, especially for older adults (Lachance 2021). As a result, volunteer opportunities have decreased significantly, and some studies have reported that the participation of older people in volunteering activities has declined considerably (Biddle and Grey 2021; Chatzi et al. 2020; Grotz et al. 2020; Principi et al. 2022). Other studies, however, have found that older people were more likely to volunteer in times of COVID-19, despite the risk to their health and distancing measures (Chan et al. 2021; Mak and Fancourt 2022). Also, before the COVID-19, some studies showed that the intensity and continuity in the volunteer activities was related to lower loneliness (Carr et al. 2018; Cho and ** amid the pandemic: daily affective and social implications of COVID-19-related prosocial activities. Gerontologist 61(1):59–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaa140 " href="/article/10.1007/s10433-023-00788-5#ref-CR56" id="ref-link-section-d8931710e5711">2021), even if they are not possible during the earlier stages of a crisis.

This study has some limitations that should be acknowledged. The main limitation is in regard to the measure of volunteering used in this study. We assessed whether individuals were involved in volunteering activities or not, and although we were able to analyze this variable across different time periods and the changes in participation, we did not consider other important factors such as the type of volunteering activity in which the people were involved or their motivations for participating. These variables could be important when assessing the impact of volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic (Principi et al. 2022).

In addition, we found some interesting results that should be addressed in greater detail. For instance, in our sample, people who volunteered after the onset of the pandemic had greater mobility limitations compared to volunteers who started before COVID-19. In a study by Mark and Fancourt (2022), it was also found that people with a diagnosed physical illness or disability were more likely to engage in social action volunteering during COVID-19, and this could indicate a desire to collaborate, but in activities that can be done from one's own home, such as participating in Internet searches. Future studies should investigate how best to promote this type of activity among older people with functional limitations who want to participate. Also, the percentage of older people volunteering increased in Israel and Western and Southern European countries, however participation in Northern and Eastern countries decreased after the start of COVID-19. In general, participation in volunteering activities is higher in Northern countries than in Southern countries (Lee 2022b). Future studies should try to understand these changes in the attitudes toward volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, it should be noted that while the overall study sample is large, certain subgroups of volunteers analyzed have small sample sizes (e.g., only 297 respondents participated during the two waves of the pandemic) and this may result in some of the regression coefficients being non-significant. There are also some additional limitations, for example, we did not consider the potential differential effects of volunteering based on the geographical area in which individuals live. Volunteering may have a greater impact in rural areas where other services are limited (Colibaba et al. 2021; Davies et al. 2018), and this could be an important factor to consider in future research. Although our study controlled for country in all analyses, we did not explore potential differences between countries. Various European countries implemented different measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic (Engler et al. 2021), and the impact of volunteering on feelings of social recognition and health may vary depending on the level of government support for such activities (Hansen et al. 2018). These differences were not explored in-depth and could be a valuable path for future research.

Nevertheless, despite the limitations, our research has the strength of having been done with a very large cross-national sample of the older adult population, with baseline pre-pandemic data and single post-pandemic outbreak measures collected over two time periods during the COVID-19 pandemic. These results have important policy implications, given that they indicate that, through volunteering, older people can counteract feelings of loneliness even in difficult times of self-isolation and physical detachment such as the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important that in emergency situations involving older individuals, policy makers not only consider them as recipients of health and social care, but also as useful providers of help in the community. The encouragement of volunteering among older people can be considered a useful strategy to avoid the feelings of loneliness during future emergency situations such as the COVID-19 outbreak.

Conclusions

In conclusion, this study sheds light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volunteering activities and the relationship between volunteering and feelings of loneliness among older adults from Europe and Israel. Our main findings indicate that volunteering before the pandemic was associated with a lower likelihood of feeling lonely at all measured time periods. However, volunteering during the first wave of the pandemic did not show a significant association with loneliness. This effect may have several explanations such as the potential coercion felt by individuals to participate in volunteering activities during the pandemic, limited opportunities for volunteering, which made it difficult for older people to contribute in the way they would normally have done, and the need for adaptation to the changes brought about by the pandemic. However, volunteering during the second wave of the pandemic was significantly associated with a lower likelihood of feeling lonely during that time. This research provides important policy implications as it shows that through volunteering, older people can manage feelings of loneliness even in difficult times such as COVID-19.