Abstract: MICE greatly uses volunteers whose informality determines that their characters are different from regular employees and has an impact on service performance. This paper analyzes the influence of role characteristics on volunteers′ service performance from the perspectives of role ambiguity and role conflict and explores the moderating effect of learning intention and values on the relationship between volunteers′ role characteristics and service performance. The empirical research shows that role ambiguity damages MICE-volunteers′ service performance, but explicit non-utilitarian motivation can alleviate the negative effect of role ambiguity; compared with role ambiguity, role conflict has little influence on MICE-volunteers′ service performance and the explicit degree of non-utilitarian motivation does not significantly moderate the relationship between role conflict and service performance. Thus, it illustrates that scientifically establishing posts and clearly defining work boundaries are the main ways to shape the volunteer service atmosphere and improve service performance, and the proper arrangement of compound work can not only make full use of human resources, but also satisfy volunteers′ non-utilitarian purpose; MICE-organizers should strengthen volunteers′ non-utilitarian motivation to achieve the “internalization” of their service goals, which can reduce the negative effect of role ambiguity on volunteers′ service performance.

Key words: MICE-volunteers, role ambiguity, role conflict, service performance, non-utilitarian motivation