Revisiting the relationship between personality and psychological contracts: A moderated mediation model explaining volunteer performance

We revisit the relationships between the Big Five personality traits on one hand and transactional, relational and ideological psychological contracts (PCs) on the other hand in a sample of volunteers. We examine whether the three-way interaction between extraversion, agreeableness and tenure explains additional variance in ideological PCs, and test the mediating role of the PC in the relationship between personality and volunteer performance. Path analysis was used to estimate a moderated mediation model, based on data from two time-lagged surveys (N=458). Our results reveal distinct main effects of personality on the three PC types and confirm the hypothesized three-way interaction effect on ideological PCs. Moreover, transactional and relational PCs acted as mediators. We conclude that the PC can help explain why--based on personality differences--some volunteers donate more time to their NPO than others.