The evolutionary context of youth volunteer cultural values and the deep impact of voluntary service on youth cultural values since the Reform and Opening Up are researched and compared, which will help to re-examine the deep influence of the times on youth values and the cultural value function of volunteer service. Inglehart's World Value Survey and Q Methodology is used to survey 13 000 young volunteers across the country, of which the results are compared with the data from Inglehart's surveys in 1984 and 2007 in China. The study shows that the young volunteers of post-80s and post-90s pursue of both cultural values and happiness values, but among them the post-90s volunteers pursue happiness values more than that of post-80s volunteers, and it is found that volunteer behavior significantly affects the development and change of youth cultural values. Volunteering can help the youth to improve social cooperation, expand social networks, enhance social integration and explore social innovation. Furthermore, volunteering can help the youth in the new era to cultivate the cultural values of mutual aid, friendship, openness, tolerance, harmony and participation, and can also help the modernization of social governance from "hard governance" to "soft governance" so as to realize the modernization of social governance ability.