Evaluating volunteer tourism: has it made a difference?

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the challenges of evaluating volunteer tourism and looks towards possibilities for rethinking the ways in which the phenomenon is conceptualised. We reflect on the debates and practices that have emerged since the first theoretical exploration introduced over 15 years ago in a book titled Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. This review paper commences with a discussion of the criticisms that have been targeted at both research and practice, and reflects on the need to rethink how volunteer tourism is evaluated. We argue that the volunteer tourism industry must respond to criticisms from academics and the media and move towards conscious choices that reframe volunteer tourism away from development aid towards intercultural mutuality and decommodification.

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteer tourism
• volunteer tourists
• decommodification
• intercultural exchange
• mutuality
• community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Stephen Wearing is a conjoint professor at the University of Newcastle (UoN), Australia. His research interests include sustainable tourism planning and management; ecotourism; community-based and volunteer tourism; environmentalism; geography and sociology of leisure and tourism; and social sciences in protected area management.

Dr. Tamara Young is a senior lecturer in tourism studies in the Newcastle Business School at the UoN, Australia. Tamara combines critical tourism theory and cultural methodologies to examine the role of tourism media as an interface between traveller cultures and travelled cultures, and the role that cultural learning in travel experiences plays in the shaping of traveller identities. Her recent work includes examining the experiential and educational aspects of tourism cultures and their significance in contemporary global society.

Phoebe Everingham is a Ph.D candidate in the discipline of Geography and Environmental studies at the UoN, Australia. Her research focus is on volunteer tourism in South America, where she has developed relationships with two organisations in Peru and Ecuador. Phoebe is particularly interested in the ways in which volunteer tourism can foster intercultural understanding and mutuality, drawing on postcolonial, decolonial, and affective theories.

ORCID

Stephen Wearing http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5158-059X

Tamara Young http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8132-4194