ABSTRACT
The National Trust (NT), a UK-based charity with a remit for the preservation and conservation of natural and built heritage, has run working holidays for over forty years. These holidays consist of volunteer participants, volunteer leaders and local NT staff. The leaders play an important role as the link between the participants, local NT staff and the wider NT organisation. They also perform a broad range of tasks requiring a variety of skills, abilities and knowledge (see Table 10.1). Most leaders have a long-term commitment to the role spanning several years with participation in a number of holidays each year. There is a lack of research in volunteer tourism concerning this long-term allegiance to an organisation and limited work on leaders of volunteer holidays (e.g. Coghlan, 2008), let alone leaders who may be volunteers themselves. Additionally, although values have been paid lip service in relation to volunteer tourism (e.g. Halpenny and Caissie, 2003) or have formed the basis of hypothetical models (e.g. Lockstone et al., 2002), there has been a lack of thorough analysis. Values have, however, been extensively examined in relation to the environment (e.g. Stern and Dietz, 1994; Schultz and Zelezny, 1999; Aoyogi-Usui et al., 2003). Similarly, motivations to volunteer have concentrated on immediate, proximate reasons for volunteering without consideration of more fundamental motivational factors or immediate antecedents or distal influences. This chapter, therefore, sets out to answer a number of questions:
1 Who is it that takes on the role of volunteer leader? 2 What are the basic human values of these volunteer leaders? 3 What are the fundamental motivational factors that lead them to volunteer? 4 How are the above three areas related to each other?
