ABSTRACT
The concept of volunteering while on vacation started in the early twentieth century (Wearing and Neil, 2001; Beigbeder, 1991) due to a growing awareness of anti-globalisation and environmental degradation issues in contemporary Western cultures (Uriely, Reichel and Ron, 2003). In the same vein, people from most parts of the world have become more educated in relation to environmental degradation and the negative consequences of economic progress. In fact, most Western governments are generally moving towards more sustainability initiatives, such as promoting green environments and the purchasing of environmental responsible goods and services, to reduce harmful effects on human health and the environment (Government of Canada, 2006). This is further supported by Drucker (1995: 255-257) who pointed out that ‘a third/non-profit/ social sector’, or volunteer organisations, will play a major role in the twentyfirst century in order to sustain the smooth running of a civil society. At the same time, the Ecovolunteer Programme (2000) identifies the specific prominent features used to describe volunteer tourism, which includes: meeting the special interests of the volunteer tourist (wildlife, education, authentic experience, participatory in nature, opportunities to meet and work with like-minded people) and his/her purposes or reasons to travel; the participants’ support towards the activities of the host (nature conservation or community development); and making new friends, learning new things and developing new skills. Volunteer tourism programmes contribute towards individual personal development and have a positive direct impact on social, natural and/or economic environments (Wearing, 2001) and sustainability. Thus, it is clear that a sustainable volunteer programme enables tourists to engage in voluntary activities while on vacations and the experiences contribute to their personal development and have an impact positively and directly on the social, nature and economic environments in which they participate (Responsible Travel Handbook, 2006). This implies that the experience dimensions of volunteer tourism are derived from different sources. An insight into the experience dimensions of volunteer tourism at a particular site will enhance the tourist satisfaction and marketing of the particular volunteer site (Crabtree and Gibson, 1992; Khan and Johnstone, 1995). Likewise, the
successful implementation of sustainable tourism requires cooperation by a wide range of different stakeholders such as the public sector, different subsectors of businesses in the tourism industry, tourist attractions/sites, tourists and host communities (Vernon et al., 2005; Aesh and Chan, 2008). Literature documents a growing demand for participatory voluntary projects in areas such as educational learning, environmental or wildlife conservation works (Ellis, 2003) and community-based activities (Emmons, 2006). These participatory voluntary projects have been implemented in a few regions of Sabah, Malaysia since the1990s (to be discussed later). There has been an increase in empirical work related to volunteer tourism which has given rise to the concept and label volunteer tourism (Uriely et al., 2003) particularly in areas of volunteer tourist experiences (Broad, 2003; Halpenny and Caissie, 2003). It is argued that tourist experiences are important issues to be considered when developing and promoting a sustainable volunteer tourism programme (Aabo, 2006). Nevertheless, there seems to be limited empirical work that specifically focuses on the experience dimensions from the tourist and host perspectives in sustaining volunteer tourism sites or projects. It is likely that volunteer tourists may not be able to search or identify suitable types of experiences that match individuals’ interests and preferences, hence the need to investigate the motivational attributes of the tourists and their experiences including host communities in developing and promoting sustainable volunteer tourism programmes, which has been raised and further supported by Broad (2003). The understanding experience dimensions of volunteer tourists could contribute towards a more practical approach to develop and promote volunteer tourism sites via sustainable volunteer tourism programmes as well as conservation of natural resources by the tourists and project sites. There has been a growing recognition of the importance of tourists’ experience in various tourism sectors and empirical research on tourists’ experiences has been conducted in a variety of areas, such as museums (Rowley, 1999), river rafting (Arnould and Price, 1993; Fluker and Turner, 2000), skydiving (Lipscombe, 1999), heritage parks (Prentice et al., 1998) and heritage sites (Masberg and Silverman, 1996; McIntosh, 1999) and ecotourism experiences (Chan and Baum, 2007a; 2007b). It is postulated that volunteer tourists’ experiences are critical in building sustainable volunteer tourism, as it is argued that volunteer tourism includes both service experience and service quality just like the tourism industry. Experience is regarded as an important element in influencing satisfaction and also the sustainability of volunteer tourism. The volunteer tourism experience is derived from the personal/emotive (tourists) and the utilitarian/functionality of the service performance (destination attributes). The psychological environment – the subjective personal reactions and feelings experienced when consuming a service – has been found to be an important part of consumer evaluation of and satisfaction with services (Otto and Ritchie, 1996). In particular, understanding experiential phenomena is crucial, as emotional reactions and decisions often prevail amongst consumers (Wakefield and Blodgett, 1994). It is argued that tourist experiences are
individualistic, subjective and emotional in nature, while the service experience is inherently interpretive, subjective and affective (McCallum and Harrison 1985; Parasuraman et al., 1988). The affective component of the service experience has been shown to consist of subjective, emotional and highly personal responses to various aspects of the service delivery. Otto and Ritchie (1996) develop six construct domains for the service experience, as shown in Table 6.1. It is argued that the construct of domains of service experiences can be extended to understand the volunteer tourist experience. Elsewhere, Aabo (2006) suggests that sustainability in volunteer tourism programmes and sites infers the generation of economic benefit for the community, the conservation of the ecological environment and the respect of the host community culture. The provision of relevant volunteer experiences via the programme or sites is deemed vital in providing relevant volunteer tourist experiences and developing and promoting volunteer tourism sites in a more sustainable manner. This means that volunteer tourist experiences are related to the sustainable volunteer tourism that should incorporate the facilitation of host community ownership and control (Wearing, 2001). Thus, a sustainable volunteer tourism site enables tourists to engage in voluntary activities while on vacation, and this experience would contribute both to their own personal development and also have a positive and direct impact on the social, nature and economic environments in which they participate. Subsequently, positive relationships exist among the volunteer tourists, tourism operators and natural resource managers to establish better interpretations by guides (Talbot and Gould, 1996). Brown and Lehto (2005) propose two types of volunteer tourists known as: a) volunteer-minded who seek out opportunities that support their altruistic tendencies; b) vacation-minded who choose their volunteering location based on vacation advertising and promotion materials. It is clear that these two mindsets have different motives, values and decision-making approaches.
