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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Nancy McGehee
School/Work Place : Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA
Contact : nmcgehee@vt.edu
Year : 2007

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a rapidly expanding urban setting in Baja California, Mexico. Both are suffering from a lack of affordable health care, with minimal access to quality public education and healthy food and drinking water. Both are experiencing the benefits and the challenges of receiving volunteer tourists. This is an attempt to illuminate the perspective of the residents of these communities and to recognize the complexity of the relationships between and among volunteer tourists and the voluntoured.

A steadily growing body of work exists in the area of volunteer tourism. McGehee and Santos (2005:760) define volunteer tourism as “utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist others in need.”

Most of the research in this area has concentrated on the volunteer tourist (Brown and Morrison, 2003; McGehee and Santos, 2005; McGehee, 2002; McGehee and Norman, 2002; Mustonen, 2005; Stoddart and Rogerson, 2004; Wearing, 2000; 2001; 2002; 2004; Wearing and Deane, 2003), as opposed to people in the local community who host the volunteers. For the most part, the research to date has been primarily descriptive and uncritically posits volunteer tourism as a positive and often environmentally sustainable alternative to mass tourism. However, very little, if any, research exists that questions or explores the socio-cultural sustainability of volunteer tourism. The purpose of this study is to illuminate some of the complex issues that exist in the relationship between volunteer tourists and the voluntoured.


List of Articles
No. Subject Views Datesort
3 Think Tank VII Environmentally Sustainable Practices of Victorian Tou... file 7965 Oct 13, 2013

Environmental sustainability has been a growing concern in our society for the past twenty years, and is a primary issue of many leaders of the tourism industry. In spite of the many efforts to encourage and/or enforce environmentally sound ...

Author: Sue Beeton, Sue Bergin-Seers & Christine Lee 

Year: 2007 

» Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 6074 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

1 Think Tank V Tourism in Small Communities: Risks and Benefits file 3449 Oct 13, 2013

This paper presents the findings from a Sustainable Tourism Co-operative Research Centre study into the risks associated with the social impacts of tourism on a small community in the Australian state of Tasmania. This state is known for its...

Author: Leo Jago, Margaret Deery & Liz Fredline 

Year: 2005 

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