ABSTRACT
This chapter examines volunteer engagement in international sports events, specifically volunteerism relating to professional golf tournaments. It is based on research carried out on the volunteers of the 2014 ISPS Handa Perth International, a golf tournament co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour of Australasia and the European Tour. The push-pull framework was based on Tolman's interpretation of the sign-gestalt paradigm to distinguish between emotional and cognitions motivators, which Dann crystallized into a tourism motivation theory. Product innovation could be conceivably considered as a 'pull factor', particularly when the game of golf faces threats to its popularity due to contemporary time and cost constraints, technical difficulty, and its culture of complicated etiquette. Volunteers are the backbone of golf tournaments worldwide. Volunteer motivation has been a dominant theme in contemporary volunteer research encompassing mega-events and tourism/conservation volunteering. The concept of volunteering still remains strong among the research participants, but for many different reasons.
