انگیزش ها و انتظارات از توریست های بین المللی داوطلب: یک مطالعه موردی از " روستای سنتی چینی

International volunteer tourists devote not only financial support but also time and effort to conservation, preservation, or humanitarian projects outside their original countries. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a qualitative study on the motivations of ten international volunteer tourists who joined the “Chinese Village Traditions” expedition of the Earthwatch Institute in the summer of 2008. The main research question was, “Why do people join international volunteer tourism trips?” Eleven themes dealing with motivations emerged and were categorized into three groups: personal, interpersonal, and other. Four personal factors were measured: authentic experience, interest in travel, challenge/stimulation, and other interest. Four interpersonal factors were also considered: desire to help, interaction with locals/cultures, encouraged by others, and enhancing relationships. Other factors included unique style of the trip, time/money, and organization goal. The findings of this study echo previous literature reviews in different settings.

Travel, originally intended for trade and conquest, had shifted over time to focus on pleasure and to serve as a symbol of social status. After WWII, the increase of disposable income, new technology, and greater political freedom led to major growth for mass tourism (Mieczkowski, 1995). Influenced by media promotion, longer holidays, and greater leisure awareness, tourism became one of the fastest growing industries in the world (Holden, 2000). After the 1970s, due to the shrinkage of financial support, many governmental and non-governmental organizations started looking for volunteers who could contribute both financially and physically to field research or reconstruction work (Ellis, 2003a). By the 1980s, environmental concerns began to influence consumption behavior. Although mass tourism was still the mainstream of the market, new tourism styles emerged, including “alternative,” “green,” “sustainable”, and “natural” (Holden, 2000). The push force of alternative tourism and the pull force of the need for volunteering promoted this novel type of tourism. Volunteer tourism has become a significant phenomenon for decades. This new form of alternative tourism has become increasingly popular under a variety of names: “volunteer tourism” (Henderson, 1981), “volunteer vacation” (McMillion, Cutchins, & Geissinger, 2006), “mini-mission” (Brown & Morrison, 2003), “mission lite,” “pro-poor tourism” (Ashley et al., 2001 and Hall, 2007), “vacation volunteering,” “altruistic tourism” (Singh, 2002), “service-based vacation,” “participatory environmental research tourism (PERT)” (Ellis, 2003b), and “voluntourism.” Based on the studies of the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (2008), the volunteer tourism market has grown rapidly, with a current yearly total of 1.6 million volunteer tourists contributing a value between USD 1.7–2.6 billion. The significant growth and the uniqueness of the style have attracted many researchers and practitioners. This type of excursion includes two elements: tourism and volunteer service. The definition of a visitor is “any person travelling to a place different from that of his/her usual environment for less than twelve months and whose main purpose of travel is another than the exercise of an activity remunerated within the place visited” (UN et al., 2001, p. 13). For the purpose of this study, tourists are visitors who stay in a particular country for at least one night, while visitors are all types of travelers (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2006). Wearing and Neil (2001, p. 233) explain, “Tourism is a complex experience, often involving subtle interaction among the tourists, the site and the host community.” Volunteerism is defined as “a specific type of sustained, planned, prosocial behavior that benefits strangers and occurs within an organizational setting” (Marta, Guglielmetti, & Maura, 2006, p. 222). Combining the definition of tourism and volunteerism, Wearing (2001) defines volunteer tourists as people who invest their time, budgets, and manpower at a destination far from home to gain cultural, environmental, and spiritual experiences. From the definitions above, volunteer tourism is clearly a tourism activity incorporating volunteer services that is concerned about environmental, cultural, or humanitarian issues and intends to benefit not only tourists but also locals. It satisfies a need for tourists who want to “travel with a purpose” (Brown & Lehto, 2005) and “make a difference during their holidays” (Coghlan, 2006), enjoying a tourist experience with the benefit of contributing to others. This kind of trip usually provides authentic experiences in places fewer general tourists approach, such as protected natural areas or distant villages. Volunteer tourism products are new to both the tourism and volunteer markets. Many stakeholders, such as government agencies, non-governmental organizations, commercial operators, and even academic institutions, have begun to offer such products and services (Ellis, 2003b). Although the content of their projects may be similar as far as the volunteer and tourism elements, their goals and missions vary widely. For example, some expeditions emphasize the tourism aspect, while others include more volunteer services. Trips may target young people, mature adults, families, unskilled laborers, students, or professionals. The duration of a trip may be less than a week, multiple weeks, months, or even years. Some expeditions require the volunteer tourists to perform extensive labor, such as building houses, and some only take one or two days, perhaps working with orphans. The concept of volunteer tourism includes a great diversity of projects and involvement of volunteer tourists. Because of the diverse characteristics of participants and the distinct context of the trips, volunteer tourism studies have shown a great breadth of motivations. Wearing (2001) explains that motivations of volunteer tourism include altruism, travel and adventure, personal growth, cultural exchange and learning, professional development, organization goal or mission, and right time or place. The four reasons why people travel with a purpose as defined by Brown and Lehto (2005) are cultural immersion, the desire to give back (altruism), camaraderie (friendship), and family. The key motives of volunteer tourism in Caissie and Halpenny's study about a nature conservation program (2003) include pleasure seeking, program “perks,” place and nature-based context, leaving a legacy, and altruism. The researchers found that the participants focused more on self than altruistic reasons and expected their trip not only to fulfill a higher need such as self-actualization but also the basic needs of relaxation and stimulation (Caissie & Halpenny, 2003). Mustonen (2007) claims that altruism, egoism, socializing, and individuality are four interactive dimensions that motivate volunteer tourists. Callanan and Thomas (2005) suggested classifying volunteer tourism into three groups: “shallow”, “intermediate”, and “deep” as Sylvan (1985)'s idea of ecology which cited in Acott and Trobe's study (1998, p. 242) Analogue to the concept of “shallow ecology” which means being more concerned about the welfare of humans alone than nature as a whole, “the shallow volunteer tourism” means being more concerned about self-development and career/academic achievement than about the welfare of local community or project itself (Callanan & Thomas, 2005). The level of involvement, contribution, trip duration, skill requirements, and the importance of self-interest motives could be the factors to categorize “shallow, intermediate, and deep” volunteer tourism (Callanan & Thomas, 2005). For Rehberg's motivation study (2005) in international volunteer program among young Swiss adults, he sorted 12 motivations from 118 participants into three categories: “achievement something positive”, “quest for the new”, and “quest for oneself”. The first group of motive focuses more on the ethical values and consideration while the second one focuses on new experience, culture, and friends. The third one focuses more on self-interest reason and mainly on career, professional, or academic field (Rehberg, 2005). Mustonen (2007) adopted Brown and Lehto's (2005) thoughts, separating the volunteer tourists into volunteer-minded and vacation-minded, yet true volunteer tourists exist in a continuous dimension somewhere in between. 1.1. Tourists' motivations Cohen (1972) classifies tourists into four groups, sorted by motivation: the organized mass tourist and the individual mass tourist seek familiarity, while the explorer and the drifter seek strangeness or novelty. Volunteer tourists are frequent travelers (Brown & Morrison, 2003) and they pursue more novelty than familiarity. From the sociological point of view, they are more close to the explorer in Cohen's classification. From a social–psychological perspective, Iso-Ahola (1983) proposes that people may tend to travel as an escape after encountering personal troubles or failures, while the gained travel experience in turn could improve intra- and interpersonal esteem and social status. A similar concept appears in Dann, 1977 and Dann, 1981. From Dann's point of view (1981), tourist motivation is “a meaningful state of mind which adequately disposes an actor or group of actors to travel, and which is subsequently interpretable by others as a valid explanation for such as decision” (p. 205). Dann, 1977 and Dann, 1981 further proposes that the reasons people engage in travel are influenced by the attraction of the destination (pull factors) and their psychological needs (push factors). The push factors related to the motivations include anomie and ego-enhancement: anomie means that people's desire to escape from daily life can be fulfilled by traveling, while ego-enhancement means people need to be recognized by others. Travel provides opportunities to satisfy the need to escape and to re-establish a tourist's ego, albeit temporarily (Dann, 1977 and Dann, 1981). Appling the concept to volunteer tourism, people who can afford this alternative tourism might be regarded in a more positive way by sharing money, free time, ability, courage, and goodwill, which can increase self-esteem or social status. Wearing, Deville, and Lyons (2008), linking to symbolic interactionism in sociology, argued that individuals could transform leisure into self-exploration through volunteer tourism. Volunteer tourism as a leisure activity satisfies individuals for searching for a more meaningful experience or life and provides a chance of self-discovery and self-understanding which one cannot get from his/her routine daily life as Kelly (1983) mentioned cited in Wearing et al. (2008, p. 64). Considering volunteer tourism trips with different characteristics, Broad's study (2003) of volunteer tourists with long duration trips concluded that the motivations of volunteer tourists focus on personal interest and travel. For university students in eco-oriented volunteer research program, motivations include personal development and academic achievement (Galley & Clifton, 2004). Weiler and Richins (1995) investigated a more scientific oriented project, the Australia Earthwatch expedition, and found participants' main reasons for joining the project were a desire to do something meaningful or conservation oriented, an interest in the subject matter, a desire to learn new things or be challenged, and an interest in helping researchers. Also, the demographics of participants, such as age, have some effects on motivation (Okun & Schultz, 2003). Clearly, the details about participant's characteristics and project content are related to participant motivation. The primary motives mentioned in previous research can be separated into three categories: (a) personal, (b) interpersonal, and (c) other factors to fit the diverse motives. Table 1 expresses the sorted categories and themes of volunteer tourism motivation discussed above. 1.2. Purpose of the study The previous literature shows that most volunteer tourism studies have focused on natural conservation or humanitarian projects (Brown, 2005, Broad, 2003, Caissie and Halpenny, 2003, Campbell and Smith, 2006, Coghlan, 2005, Galley and Clifton, 2004 and Weiler and Richins, 1995). Furthermore, the majority of volunteer tourism studies have been done in western countries such as Australia, the United States, the UK, and Canada (Halpenny & Caissie, 2003). Only a few studies focus on destinations in eastern countries (e.g., Singh, 2002, in India; Broad, 2001, in Thailand). Possibly, because the concept of volunteerism originated in western society, the standard of living in developed countries has provided those people with more disposable income and more flexible schedules (free time and holidays); moreover, the market of volunteer tourism also started in these developed countries. After considering the lack of studies in eastern developing country settings as well as the accessibility, budget, time frame, and cultural background of the primary researcher (speaking Mandarin), the “Chinese Village Traditions” expedition of the Earthwatch Institute in China was selected as the research target. The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the motivation of international volunteer tourists by using qualitative methods in an eastern developing country setting in order to compare and contrast with previous literature reviews. The main inquiry question is, “Why do people join international volunteer tourism trips?”

The case study of the “Chinese Village Traditions” expedition illustrated a typical international volunteer tourism trip. The site was located in a remote village that foreign tourists seldom approach. The majority of the expedition was devoted to volunteer services helping PIs collect and record research documents; a few days were also allotted for sightseeing. The volunteer tourists stayed with a host family during the expedition, offering even deeper cultural interaction. The primary researcher utilized qualitative method to explore the expectations and motivations of the participants in this expedition. The most frequently mentioned motivations in this study are authentic experience and interaction with locals or culture. The desire to trade the standard daily environment for a brand new world prompts participants to join international volunteer tourism trips. To satisfy these needs, approaches encouraging the interactions between locals and participants such as using local houses as accommodations should be taken into account. Although such arrangements may be difficult and take more effort, it promotes culture encounter for both participants and the locals. On the other hand, most participants were first-time visitors who had little or no knowledge about the local culture or language in this study. Therefore, cultural barriers are indeed expected in such a trip. Participants with various motivations and expectations may have different levels of culture difficulties and copying strategies in one team. From managerial viewpoints, giving pre-trip orientations and detailed information regarding living condition in the village visited are crucial that could help participants to cope with apprehension owing to cultural shock. For example, some participants may consider limited water sources and pit holes as exciting residential experience while some may really concern about the sanitary issues. Also, the acquired trip experience by past participants could be utilized as a guidepost for new participant to prevail cultural barriers. Finally, the study targets a group known as shallow volunteer tourists, based on Callanan and Thomas (2005). Shallow volunteer tourists prefer short-term trips (e.g., few weeks), demonstrate few skills, experience low levels of direct contributions to locals, and tend to be more passive in participation. According to Callanan and Thomas (2005), the destination of the project and self-interest motives plays significant roles in participants' decision making processes. Also, the meaning of the project must be emphasized. International volunteer tourists spend considerable amounts of money, time, and labor volunteering and sightseeing. The importance of the project is a major point of their concern. To attract and retain international volunteer tourists, operators should pay specific attentions to these points. In summary, the eleven themes of motivation extracted from the comments of 10 international volunteer tourists of the “Chinese Village Traditions” expeditions were categorized into three groups. There are four themes within personal factors: authentic experience, interest in travel, challenge/stimulation, and other interest; four themes within interpersonal factors: desire to help, interaction with locals/cultures, encouraged by others, and enhancing relationships; and three themes within other factors: unique style of the trip, time/money, and organization goal. By comparing the previous literature review, the motivations themes found in the study were confirmed with other research. Since this qualitative study is considered as an exploratory research, it is suggested that the findings of 11 motivation items can lead to the construction of an international volunteer tourists' motivation scale by using a large-scale survey which may further streamline the motivation dimensionality.