In recent years, with more and more large-scale events and summits being held in China, the
demand for volunteers is increasing, and the public service motivation under the background of “unpaid
and voluntary” is gradually attached great importance, which is of great significance to the research of
public management. Many scholars at home and abroad have studied the influencing factors of public
service motivation from the perspective of demography, but few studies involve the effect of positive
personality traits on public service motivation. Therefore, this paper mainly studies the influence of
character strengths, a positive personality trait, on public service motivation, as well as the role of public
service motivation on voluntary behavior, and analyzes the mediating effect of public service motivation
in the above-mentioned relationship. 302 college students were investigated with the Chinese Virtues
Questionnaire (CVQ), Public Service Motivation Scale and Voluntary Behavior Scale in the longitudinal
study. The valid data were processed and analyzed by SPSS19.0. The results show that: (1) Relationship,
vitality and conscientiousness have significant positive effects on public service motivation. (2)
Relationship and conscientiousness have significant positive impacts on voluntary behavior. (3) College
students’ public service motivation plays the mediating effect between relationship, conscientiousness and
voluntary behavior.