Understanding community attitudes towards volunteer tourism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Volunteer tourism has been growing rapidly since the last decade. However, similar to other forms of tourism, volunteer tourism has been criticised for neglecting locals’ desires. As such, it is crucial to empower local communities and understand their needs, including their perceptions and attitudes towards volunteer tourism. Social representations have been used to examine community members’ ideas, their perceptions and the ways they think about tourism development. However, how local communities perceive alternative forms of tourism, including volunteer tourism have been under-researched. Using qualitative interviews with local residents in Mongolia, one of the post-Soviet countries and a fast-growing volunteer tourism destination in the world, this paper examines host communities’ general understanding and attitudes towards volunteerism and volunteer tourism development based on the perceived impacts, and considers how the social constructions of volunteerism underpin local residents’ perceptions of volunteer tourism. In addition, by investigating the historical and cultural influences in the host community, this article aims to pinpoint the relationship between social representations and cultural influences, offering an interesting insight to understand volunteer tourism development.