Volunteer tourism and beyond: motivations and barriers to participation in protected area enhancement

Abstract

After reviewing volunteer tourist motivations generally, 804 domestic visitors to two National Parks in Australia's Gold Coast region were surveyed to identify the motivations and barriers that would either facilitate or inhibit participation in a range of 20 hypothetical volunteering and “quasi-volunteering” site enhancement activities, both on- and off-site, that could help achieve park/visitor symbiosis. Factor analysis of 24 motivation items from the valid returned questionnaires revealed “altruism”, “personal wellbeing” and “personal status” dimensions, with only the first two attracting overall positive means. Variable support for these site enhancement activities, however, was evident when motivation means and factor scores were calculated for visitor segments identified earlier. Clusters open to participation yielded higher motivation levels, but the “altruism” dimension showed a greater range from higher to lower willingness. Throughout, the motivation scores of females were higher. Distance and time were the main barriers to participation, with low amenability clusters yielding the highest level of perceived barriers. The results suggest that motivations of altruism and selected self-interest should be combined in strategies to attract and satisfy participants in protected area site enhancement, to develop aspects of the ecotourium concept and capitalise on the growing interest in personal wellbeing.

志愿旅游业和超越：参与增强区域保护的动机和障碍

在大致回顾志愿者旅游动机后，804名去到澳大利亚黄金海岸地区两个国家公园的国内游客被进行了调查，以确定的动机和障碍会起促进或抑制作用参与了一系列20个假设的志愿服务和``准志愿者"现场改善活动，无论是现场和非现场，这可以帮助实现园区/访客的共生。从有效回收的问卷24项动机因素分析显示，在``利他主义"、``个人健康"和``个人身份"三个方面中，整体上只有前两个吸引积极手段的采取。然而当Weaver（2013）早前确定了适合于客群的动机和手段因子，这些网站增强活动的变量支持是显而易见的。集群参与开放取得了较高的动机水平，但``利他"层面在较大的范围内表现出从高至低的意愿。自始至终，女性的动机得分均较高。在低顺从集群让步于感知障碍的最大程度时，距离和时间是参与的主要障碍因素。结果表明，利他主义和选择自身利益的动机应该在策略上结合起来以吸引和满足参与者增强区域保护，发展生态旅游的概念和在个人福祉上获利。

Keywords:

• protected areas
• volunteer tourism
• sustainable tourism
• volunteering
• motivations
• barriers

关键词:

• 区域保护
• 志愿旅游业
• 志愿活动
• 动机
• 障碍

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2014.992901).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) through Project [DP1093557], “Enabling tourism/conservation symbiosis by engaging protected area visitors in focused lifelong activism”. The author is the sole recipient of this grant.

Notes on contributors

David Weaver

David Weaver has published more than 120 journal articles and book chapters in the areas of sustainable tourism, destination cycles, ecotourism, resident perceptions and tourism heritage. He is a fellow in the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and author of several widely used tourism textbooks.