Sustaining the common good: tourism professional motives to volunteer for the tourism industry

ABSTRACT

Volunteer tourism research has studied individual motives to participating in development work overseas. There is, however, an absence of research examining what influences corporate individual employees to volunteer for tourism-related activities as representatives of their organisation within their own country. This paper investigates tourism professionals’ purpose(s) for engaging in tourism-centred volunteer tourism opportunities and, in addition, compares tourism professional motives with motives of volunteer tourists as reported in previous research. Purposive sampling techniques were employed to select individuals, and data were collected through 23 interviews with tourism professionals attending the 1–3 November 2015 Tourism Cares event in Williams, AZ, USA (a town near Grand Canyon National Park, USA). Tourism Cares is a non-profit tourism industry organisation supporting tourism industry education and community building. Results suggest tourism professionals’ motives to volunteer for the tourism industry are linked to the common good approach and the sustaining of the tourism product, which directly affects tourism professionals’ livelihood. This is a new volunteer tourist motive related to corporate or individual employees who volunteer for their own industry. Study implications can be beneficial for employee-volunteer management and business ethics, as well as its contribution to corporate social responsibility, sustainable tourism, and volunteer tourism research.

KEYWORDS:

• Volunteer motives
• volunteer tourism
• common good approach
• corporate and individual social responsibility
• tourism cares

Acknowledgements

We thank the volunteers and staff of Tourism Cares for their contributions to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lana M. Olsen is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University (ASU). She is also a research analyst for the Centre for Sustainable Tourism at ASU. Her research interests include volunteer tourism’s impact on host communities (particularly youth), use of music in sustainable tourism development, and sustainability of volunteer tourism community projects.

Christine Vogt, Ph.D., is Professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University (ASU). She directs the Centre for Sustainable Tourism at ASU. She studies natural resource based tourism and recreation primarily in park settings that range from urban to large scale national parks or forests. She conducts survey research and evaluation and is widely published in leisure, tourism, recreation and parks, and natural resource journals.

Kathleen Andereck, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University (ASU). She is a Senior Sustainability Scientist with ASU’s Global Institute for Sustainability. She studies tourism and quality of life, residents’ attitudes toward tourism, volunteer tourism, and tourist behaviour in recreation settings. She has conducted research with organisations and agencies, and is extensively published in tourism and recreation journals.