ORIGINAL ARTICLE Public or nonprofit? Career preferences and dimensions of public service motivation Xavier Ballart | Guillem Rico Department of Political Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain Correspondence Xavier Ballart, Department of Political Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Edifici B, Bellaterra 08193, Spain. Email: xavier.ballart@uab.es Funding information Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Spain), Grant/Award Number: CSO2017-86653-P While the foundational claim that PSM attracts individuals to the public sector is well established in the research literature, much uncertainty still exists about its influence on the choice between the public versus the nonprofit sector, which also frequently exhibits a strong public service mission. Little is known also about how discrete dimensions of PSM differ in their effects on such job preferences. This article addresses these shortcomings by drawing on a study that combines the measurement of separate dimen- sions of PSM with a policy-capturing design that allows disentan- gling the effects of sector from those of other job attributes that usually correlate with it: the service orientation of the job and job security. Results show that dimensions of PSM display relevant differences in their effects on preferences across job attributes. These findings have important implications for the choice of PSM measurements in scholarly research and job selection. 1 | INTRODUCTION How does public service motivation (PSM) affect students' career preferences? PSM is a concept based on the pre- mise that some individuals are motivated to serve the public interest in their professional careers (Perry 1996; Kim et al. 2013). They are said to feel a special type of ‘calling’ that Perry and Wise (1990) defined as a ‘predisposition to respond to motives founded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations’ (p. 368). They are hence more likely to choose careers that provide more opportunities to satisfy their desire to help others and bene- fit society. The foundational claim that PSM attracts individuals to the public sector has been substantiated by a large body of research (Houston 2000; Lewis and Frank 2002; Steijn 2008). This article addresses two shortcomings in the lit- erature on the influence of PSM on career choice. First, the PSM construct is multidimensional, based on a combination of rational, normative, affective and self- sacrifice motives. The dimensions of PSM are not interchangeable, in that each represents a ‘distinct and potentially unique form of PSM’ (Kim and Vandenabeele 2010, p. 706). Consequently, different dimensions can have different effects on behaviour and different dimensions can have countervailing influences on the same outcome. Even if PSM is based on a multidimensional concept, it is frequently operationalized in the relevant literature using an DOI: 10.1111/padm.12403 Public Administration. 2018;1–17. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1