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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
6 Think Tank IV Cultural Tourism as a Means for Sustainability in a Ma... file 4169 Oct 13, 2013

Tourism has become for many islands a means of social, economic and cultural development through the creation of jobs, raising standards of living and through the development of local resources for culture and heritage. Thus, many of these d...

Author: Chryso Panayidou 

Year: 2004 

5 Think Tank IV Impediments to Sustainable Service Quality in Luxury H... file 15876 Oct 13, 2013

In order for tourism to be sustainable in the long term, there must be continued viability of tourism related entities (Tesone 2004), that is business operations must be sustainable. Hotels are major tourism entities and play an important ro...

Author: Rayka Presbury 

Year: 2004 

4 Think Tank IV After the Sydney Olympic Games: Sustainable Infrastruc... file 3211 Oct 13, 2013

Olympic Games epitomize the definition of a mega event, due to the size and scope that these events have in terms of participation, worldwide viewing and infrastructure development. However with the commercialization of these events over the...

Author: Sacha Reid 

Year: 2004 

3 Think Tank IV Sustainability and Mass Destinations: Challenges and P... file 4451 Oct 13, 2013

In year 2001, the Government of the Balearic Islands decided to establish a tourism tax, named "ecotax", as an important measure to achieve a more sustainable tourism model for the islands. This paper analyses the background of the ecotax, t...

Author: Antoni Serra Cantallops 

Year: 2004 

2 Think Tank IV Sustainability in a Mature Mass-Tourism Destination: T... file 4687 Oct 13, 2013

Most destinations are struggling to achieve sustainability for their economies, their environments, their cultures and their tourism industries. This laudatory, idealistic and complex process involves many sectors of the industry, the commun...

Author: Pauline Sheldon, John Knox & Kem Lowry 

Year: 2004 

1 Think Tank IV The Benefits of Visitor and Non-Visitor Research in th... file 4198 Oct 13, 2013

Our premise in this paper is that if sustainable tourism development and management is to meet the needs of both the present and the future then it is equally important to prioritise research on those who visit tourism destinations (and incl...

Author: Pat Sterry & Debra Leighton 

Year: 2004 

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