Volunteer Tourism: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

In recent years, volunteer tourism has flourished as an alternative to traditional tourism aimed at fostering reciprocity between participants and the host community. Although this led to an increasing interest among scholars, little attention has been given on identifying the current state of knowledge on volunteer tourism. This systematic literature review is designed to evaluate the academic literature on volunteer tourism in terms of the research methodology, population, geographical location, theoretical framework, and research topics. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, this paper covers 184 articles published in Web of Science database from January 2010 to December 2021. Findings reveal that most of the research on volunteer tourism have been conducted from a qualitative approach taking volunteer tourists as study sample. Results show that previous literature on volunteer tourism have been focused on the following perspectives: studies focused on the experience of key stakeholders, studies aimed at understanding the volunteer tourism industry, studies on volunteer tourism as it relates to sustainable development, and studies focused on volunteer tourism and global citizenship. The analysis of current state of knowledge about volunteer tourism also suggests several directions for further research in this domain.

Introduction

Globalization has accelerated the adoption of new trends in markets that are becoming more competitive in time (Matyushok et al., 2021; Miletic et al., 2011). In fact, there has been a notable increase in the desire of consumers to shift their preferred brands to those that are socially and environmentally responsible (Joshi & Rahman, 2015; Mehta & Chahal, 2021). The tourism industry is not the exception to this pattern. Nowadays, there are many alternatives to traditional tourism that specifically respond to the values of this socially and environmentally responsible market segment (Medeiros et al., 2021). Some of them are ecotourism, green tourism, community tourism, and volunteer tourism. Instead of taking tourists to places where huge crowds go, these alternatives offer travel experiences oriented toward sustainability, and help to balance economic, social, and environmental concerns as they do so (Chebli et al., 2022; Prince & Ioannides, 2017).

Volunteer tourism is oriented to promote reciprocity between participants and the host community (Bailey & Russell, 2012). The term “volunteer tourists” refers to those tourists who, for different reasons, organize vacation trips to specific destinations in order to carry out activities that aim to reduce poverty in certain sectors of the population, restore the environment, or conduct research on certain social or environmental issues (Wearing, 2001). Thus, volunteer tourism connects free time with recreation, which are key touristic aspects, to help solve social problems like poverty, the plight of orphans, and pollution (Barbieri et al., 2012).

In the last decade, volunteer tourism has flourished as a popular alternative to traditional tourism as evidenced in the increasing number of organizations and participants (An et al., 2022). The volunteer tourism industry is valued at approximately USD 1.7 to 2.6 billion and involves around 10 million volunteer tourists a year (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, 2018). Nowadays, there are more than 800 international organizations in 151 countries that promote volunteer tourism activities and projects; the United States is the country with the largest number of organizations doing so (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, 2018). According to Salvador (2020), most volunteers come from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and they tend to do volunteer work in Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America. Volunteer tourism is very popular among people aged 18 to 25, and most volunteers are women. In terms of the profile of a volunteer tourist, Amsyar (2018) reported some statistics based on data from an international volunteer tourism operator: 66% of participants were women, 34% were men; and they had a high socioeconomic status as well as willingness to learn (Y. Lee & Won, 2017).

The increasing popularity of volunteer tourism led to scholars to conduct more research in this topic (McGehee, 2014). According to Almela and Calvet (2021), three main findings have emerged in the literature on volunteer tourism in recent years. First, it was found that the motivation of volunteer tourists was based on their personal and professional goals, not in pure altruism (Everingham, 2015). Second, some authors such as Banki and Schonell (2018) registered both positive and negative effects of volunteer tourism on host communities. Third, the literature has also provided recommendations to volunteer tourism operators as to how to improve the experiences of stakeholders (Hertwig & Lusby, 2021), especially in terms of the host community’s sustainable development (Lupoli et al., 2015; Schneller & Coburn 2018). This last topic has received heightened attention due to the growing number of tourism operators that have shown tendencies toward greening their operations and products (Hopkins, 2020).

Although volunteer work can provide short-term benefits to the host community, a lack of commitment can prove to be an obstacle to the sustainable development of the community (Lee & Zhang, 2020). In this regard, keeping in mind the “sustainability trinity” of Farrell (1999), achieving an environmental, economic, and sociocultural balance might not be enough to contribute to the growth of the volunteer tourism industry. It is necessary to establish long-term relationships between the volunteer tourists and the community members, as well as to promote communication, considering the points of view of all key stakeholders, especially those of the members of the host community. However, the literature on volunteer tourism has mainly focused on the experiences of participants, and it has paid very little attention to the host communities (Wearing & McGehee, 2013). Even though the interest in research on volunteer tourism has increased, there is a lack of studies that examined the academic literature on this topic. To the best of our knowledge, no previous research has attempted to systematically review the research on volunteer tourism. Thus, this represents an opportunity to analyze the current discussion on this topic, and identify avenues for further research.

The growing interest in volunteer tourism by academia and industry has generated a need to identify the current status of the existing scientific knowledge on this topic. This literature review analyzed the state of art on volunteer tourism. It focused on exploring the number of publications per year, authors and their citations, journals with the greatest number of publications, research methodologies, types of population, geographical locations of the population, theoretical framework, and research topics. This systematic literature review (SLR) particularly aimed to answer the following research questions:

• RQ1. What is the current status of volunteer tourism research between 2010 and 2021?

• RQ2. What are the main research topics addressed on the volunteer tourism phenomenon?

• RQ3. What are the research gaps on volunteer tourism literature?

Methodology

In this study, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify, synthesize and analyze previous studies using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and the Meta-Analyses methodology (PRISMA, 2020). According to Pahlevan-Sharif et al. (2019), the PRISMA checklist represents one of the most comprehensive checklists to assess current and future trends in any field. In fact, it has been extensively applied in tourism studies (Doran et al., 2022; Rosalina et al., 2021). The PRISMA checklist establishes the steps needed to conduct a literature review that can be replicable by other researchers and generate reliable data. The first stage consists of determining the objectives of the review and poses research questions. The second stage establishes the literature review protocol, the search strings, the databases, and the criteria for selecting the literature to be analyzed. In the third stage, the researcher identifies the selected databases and filters the search results according to the selection criteria. Finally, in the last stage, researchers analyze the results to collect relevant information and create summary tables and references; but also analyze the content of the data collected.

The data collection of yearly publications, journals, authors, and citations, provide a general outlook of the literature on volunteer tourism. The information collected with respect to research methodology, population, geographical location, theoretical framework, and research topic allow us to further evaluate the state of the art with respect to volunteer tourism research, along with identifying the main research topics and gaps. This review process, along with the PRISMA method, have been previously implemented to analyze academic literature on topics related to tourism (Janjua et al., 2021; Z. Lin & Rasoolimanesh, 2022; Santos et al., 2021). In this systematic literature review we guaranteed transparency using the PRISMA checklist, so that other researchers can verify the execution, quality, and rigor of this work (Kim et al., 2018).

In terms of the protocol used in this study, the search was conducted in the Web of Science (WoS) database. In the first stage, we only considered articles published in English from January 2010 to December 2021. We used the term “volunteer tourism” as a keyword and the search was limited to abstracts, titles, and keywords. We identified 188 articles, but we decided to consider only those written in English and exclude conference proceedings, book chapters, and essays, which is a common practice in literature reviews using PRISMA method (Estevao & Costa, 2020; Rasul, 2019). In addition, these types of documents do not necessarily follow a similar structure as that of research articles. This represents a challenge during the data collection process in accordance to the study design, which in turn could potentially bias the results of the study. Thus, the number of articles was reduced to 184. We screened all the abstracts for relevance and we considered that the184 articles were relevant in the literature. In the end, the 184 articles were included in the final synthesis and content analysis.

We analyzed the articles using the Analyze Results Tool by Web of Science (Clarivate) Core Collection (i.e., fields of research, journal, years, authors, and citations). In addition, an in-depth review process of each of the 184 papers led us to conduct the analysis of the research methodologies; geographical locations of the study population, theoretical frameworks, and research lines. The next section shows the systematic review results.

Results

This section presents the analysis results of the 184 articles on volunteer tourism. The first part of this section covers the evolution of the scientific production, the journals with the greatest number of publications, and the authors as well as their citations. The second part explains the content analysis of the articles, considering the research methodology, type of population, geographical location of the population, theoretical framework, and research topic. Appendix A, B, C, and D show detailed information of the 184 articles, which were classified based on their research approach.

Years of Publication and Journals

Figure 1 shows the number of publications on this topic over the years. In general terms, the number of publications on volunteer tourism is growing, which highlights the increasing academic interest on the subject. The highest number of publications (28 articles) were recorded during 2017 and 2020, respectively. The 184 articles were published in 72 journals (Figure 2 shows journals that published at least two articles). The journal with the largest number of articles published was the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (25 publications), followed by Current Issues in Tourism (15 publications), Tourism Recreation Research (14 publications), Annals of Tourism Research (13 publications), and Tourism Geographies (11 publications). These five journals published approximately 42.4% of the articles analyzed in this literature review.

Figure 1.

Number of publications on volunteer tourism, by year.

Figure 2.

Number of publications on volunteer tourism, by journal.

Authors and Citations

A total of 273 authors wrote the 184 articles reviewed. Among them, 64 authors published more than one article, 28 published more than two articles, 13 published more than three articles, 10 published more than four articles, and only four authors published more than five articles. However, none of the authors with more than five articles published had at least one of them among the 10 most cited articles. In terms of citations, Palacios (2010) had the most cited article with 198 citations; followed by Lyons et al. (2012) and Sin (2010) with 190 and 164 citations, respectively.

Research Methodology

Regarding the research approach, most of the studies used the qualitative paradigm. Table 1 shows that 116 (63%) of the studies used said paradigm. Among this group, we found that ethnography (27.6%) was the most popular qualitative method, followed by thematic analysis (14.7%). Likewise, we identified 30 (16.3%) quantitative studies. The most used quantitative methods were the structural equation modeling (SEM) and the varimax rotation, with 12 (40%) and 4 (13.3%) publications, respectively. Study methods are available in the Appendix section. The third category of publications, “other methods,” includes 29 (15.8%) articles, including review articles, short reports, and conceptual papers. The last category was mixed methods studies, with 9 (4.9%) publications that use both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Table 1.

Research Approach and Sample of Studies on Volunteer Tourism.

Research approach	Freq.	%	Sample	Freq.	%
Qualitative	116	63.0	Volunteers	115	74.2
Quantitative	30	16.3	Community members	32	20.6
Other	29	15.8	Staff members	28	18.1
Mixed	9	4.9	Directors, managers, and coordinators	16	10.3
			Other participants	10	6.5

Population

Studies on volunteer tourism have used different types of populations to analyze this phenomenon (see Table 1). The main participants were volunteer tourists (74.2%), followed by host community members (20.6%) and tourism operator staff members (18.1%). In fourth place (10.3%) were the directors, managers, and coordinators within organizations that offer volunteer tourism experiences, and in the fifth place (6.5%) were the other participants (e.g., students, teachers, and local authorities).

Geographical Location

Figure 3 presents information on the countries of origin and destination of the volunteers. The light blue and green colors represent the countries of origin and destination, respectively. Orange colored countries are countries of origin but also destination for volunteer tourists. It shows that the main regions of origin for volunteers are North America and Europe. On the other hand, the main destination countries are Central and South America, Southern Africa, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. In that sense, it is possible to observe that volunteer tourism is mainly from the Global North to the Global South (Bandyopadhyay & Patil, 2017; Parreñas, 2012). In addition, Table 2 displays the most documented countries by volunteers’ origin and destination. According to the results, the most documented country of origin was the United Kingdom (18%). In case of volunteers’ country of destination, Thailand (11.8%) was the most popular country.

Figure 3.

Countries of origin/destination for volunteer tourists, based on the literature reviewed.

Table 2.

The Five Most Documented Countries by Volunteers’ Origin and Destination.

Country of origin	Freq.	%	Country of destination	Freq.	%
United Kingdom	24	18.0	Thailand	20	11.8
United States of America	22	16.5	Kenya	9	5.3
Australia	15	11.3	Cambodia	8	4.7
Canada	11	8.3	India	8	4.7
France	7	5.3	Philippines	7	4.1

Theoretical Framework

The theories used as a general framework for the articles analyzed varied greatly. We found that 105 (57.1%) articles did not use any specific theory to frame their findings. In terms of the studies that used theoretical frameworks, the most commonly applied was the transformative learning, which has been used to understand the learning process of volunteer tourists, followed by the theory of planned behavior and the collaboration theory.

Research Topics

Based on the analysis, we identified that previous literature has mainly focused on four research topics: the volunteer tourism experience of the key stakeholders (with 53.8% of the articles); the volunteer tourism industry (33.2%); the relationship between volunteer tourism and sustainable development (8.2%); and the relationship between volunteer tourism and global citizenship (4.9%).

In terms of the first research topic, these studies focused on analyzing the experiences of the key stakeholders in volunteer tourism, and considered three main groups: volunteer tourists; host community members; and tourism operator staff members, directors, and managers. Regarding volunteer tourists, some studies analyzed their motivations (Nadeau & Lord, 2017; Proyrungroj, 2021), behavioral intention (Manosuthi et al., 2020), and perceptions of their impact on host communities (Aquino & Andereck, 2018; Bargeman et al., 2018). Another key stakeholder identified in the literature was the host community. In this case, studies focused on host community members’ expectations (Lupoli & Morse, 2015; Yamamoto & Engelsted, 2014), roles (Hollas et al., 2021; Thompson, 2021), and attitudes toward volunteer tourism (H. Lee, 2020; Terry, 2014). The third group of key stakeholders included volunteer tourism operators’ directors, managers, and staff members. Research on these stakeholders focused on their roles (Sinervo, 2013; Smith & Font, 2014) and perceptions (Burrai et al., 2015) as they relate to volunteer tourism.

The second research topic assessed the volunteer tourism industry. In this context, some authors implemented a marketplace perspective to evaluate the supply and demand for volunteer tourism (Pompurová et al., 2020a, 2020b; Yamamoto & Engelsted, 2014). Moreover, other studies focused on the process of neoliberalization of the volunteer tourism industry, that is, the reproduction of behaviors that reinforce the power imbalance between the Global North and Global South (Gilbertson et al., 2021; Kadomskaia et al., 2021; Mostafanezhad, 2013a). The final group included studies oriented toward the management of volunteer organizations. These studies mainly focused on the complexity of the planning and development process of volunteer tourism projects (Burrai et al., 2017), through the monitoring and evaluation of those volunteer tourism projects (Steele et al., 2017).

The third research topic can be defined as studies that connect the sustainable development with volunteer tourism. One group of articles analyzed the interaction between the key stakeholders and their influence on the sustainable development of the host community (Eckardt et al., 2021b; H. Lee & Zhang, 2020). These articles used qualitative research methods (predominantly ethnography), as well as data from communities mainly located in Africa and Asia. Among this group of authors, Eckardt et al. (2021b) conducted a research on the role of collaboration relationships within the supply chain to promote sustainability. Using a framework analysis approach, these authors highlighted that the communication between volunteer tourists and tourism operator staff members is a key necessary factor to respond to the needs of the host community. On the other hand, other studies have analyzed the role that a specific stakeholder had in promoting the community’s sustainable development. For example, Thompson et al. (2017) used power and control theory to examine volunteer compliance in order to develop more effective and sustainable host community projects. In this case, the authors used qualitative research methods and data coming from the Global South. Finally, another group of articles focused on studying the volunteer tourism industry and its impact on the sustainable development of the host communities, through studies that propose methods to carry out volunteer tourism projects (Lockstone-Binney & Ong, 2021) or to identify and evaluate their level of impact (Lupoli et al., 2015).

The fourth research topic focused on volunteer tourism and its relationship with global citizenship. Most of the literature analyzed how volunteer tourism promotes the idea of global citizenship both among the volunteers and within the host community (Butcher, 2017; Jakubiak & Iordache-Bryant, 2017; Judge, 2017; Lyons & Wearing, 2012). In addition, another group of studies used this idea to emphasize some of the benefits of volunteer tourism, like the production of scientific knowledge (Gray et al., 2017) and the valorization of cross-cultural understanding (Lyons et al., 2012). Table 3 includes the most cited articles within the four research lines analyzed in this section.

Table 3.

The Most Cited Articles Within Each Topic of Research.

Research topic	Freq.	%	Reference
The experience of key stakeholders	99	53.8	Barbieri et al. (2012), Chen and Chen (2011), Conran (2011), Lo and Lee (2011), Mostafanezhad (2013b), Ooi and Laing (2010), Palacios (2010), Sin (2010)
The volunteer tourism industry	61	33.2	Coghlan and Gooch (2011), Keese (2011), McGehee (2012), McGehee (2014), Mostafanezhad (2013c), Mostafanezhad (2014a), Parreñas (2012), Tomazos and Cooper (2012)
Volunteer tourism and sustainable development	15	8.2	Chao (2014), H. Lee and Zhang (2020), Lupoli et al. (2014), Lupoli et al. (2015), Schneller and Coburn (2018), Steele and Dredge (2017), Vodopivec and Jaffe (2011), Weaver and Jin (2016)
Volunteer tourism and global citizenship	9	4.9	Bone and Bone (2018), Butcher (2017), Gray et al. (2017), Jakubiak (2020), Jakubiak and Iordache-Bryant (2017), Judge (2017), Lyons et al. (2012), Ong et al. (2018)

Discussion and Future Research Directions

The review reveals several gaps in volunteer tourism literature. We identified a methodology gap in the research on volunteer tourism. The results showed that 63% of research used the qualitative paradigm and only 16.3% used a quantitative paradigm. Given the knowledge generated in the previous literature, there is sufficient theoretical support to study quantitative theoretical models on volunteer tourism to explain the relationship between different variables. For example, further research could analyze volunteers’ motivations using the social cognitive theory. Particularly, this theory indicates that self-efficacy influences behaviors via other processes that include outcome expectations, social support, and self-regulation in regard to the behavior (Bandura, 1991). In addition, the Self-determination theory also represents a relevant theoretical framework for analyzing volunteer tourism. This theory emphasizes the relevance of autonomy, competence and relatedness in shaping behaviors (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Both theories represent an opportunity to quantitatively assess volunteers motivations and obtain further information for practitioners.

A population gap related to volunteer tourism was identified. In this case, volunteer tourists (74.2%) were the most studied sample population. In other words, volunteer tourists were the main subject of study while other stakeholders lagged far behind. Future research should deepen the analysis of the experience of key stakeholders in volunteer tourism such as the host community, directors, managers, and staff members of volunteer tourism operators. In terms of geographical location, we found that volunteers mainly came from North America, Europe, and East Asia, while the main destinations were located in Central America, South America, Southern Africa, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. These results represent an opportunity for further research in developing countries. In this context, recent studies highlight the increasing popularity of domestic volunteer tourism (Chen, 2016; Pompurová et al., 2020a). Further research could focus on domestic or intraregional volunteer tourism in developing countries. In addition, many authors highlighted how the number of women participating in this type of activity is much larger than the number of men. This disparity appears to be an intrinsic characteristic of volunteer tourism (Bandyopadhyay & Patil, 2017; Kipp et al., 2021). However, we did not find any article focused on exploring the underlying causes of this phenomenon within the context of volunteer tourism. Therefore, this knowledge gap translates into an opportunity for further research on the drivers of this phenomenon.

The following research topics emerged: the volunteer tourism experience of the key stakeholders; the volunteer tourism industry; the relationship between volunteer tourism and sustainable development; and the relationship between volunteer tourism and global citizenship. These research topics provided a frame of reference for future research. However, we found that most of the literature covered the experience of key stakeholders, followed by the volunteer tourism industry. Few studies discussed about the relationship between volunteer tourism and sustainable development, and the relationship between volunteer tourism and global citizenship. The role of staff members in the volunteer tourism experience is a topic that has recently attracted attention from the academia (Bargeman et al., 2018; Everingham, 2015). However, their impact on the sustainable development of volunteer tourism host communities needs to be further analyzed to achieve greater sustainability in volunteer tourism and to improve the stakeholder experience. In fact, empirical evidence on the influence of staff members on the achievement of sustainable development goals within host communities is limited (Janjua et al., 2022; Lockstone-Binney & Ong, 2021).

Furthermore, we identified a practical-knowledge gap related to the management of volunteer tourism operators. We found that most previous studies focused on evaluating the volunteer tourism industry (Hertwig & Lusby, 2021; Ong et al., 2014). However, there are few practical studies about the management of volunteer tourism operators that provide useful information for the directors, managers, or coordinators. This topic is becoming more important due to the fact that this industry is becoming increasingly competitive. In that sense, we suggest to carry out studies to understand the relationship between volunteer tourism and sustainable development, specifically the management of volunteer tourism organizations and their impact on the sustainable development of the host communities. Finally, we suggest to continue more analysis on the association between volunteer tourism and global citizenship. Global citizenship is linked with volunteering, as it encourages individuals to see themselves as having obligations toward global concerns and therefore promotes active involvement across national borders (Lough & McBride, 2013; Woosnam et al., 2019). However, empirical evidence on this subject remains limited.

Conclusions and Limitations

This paper presented the findings of a systematic literature review (SRL) of journal articles published between 2010 and 2021 about the volunteer tourism phenomenon. During this period, the substantial increase in publications within the field demonstrates a growing interest in this topic. The results showed that distributions of journals and authors did not vary greatly in terms of articles published. In that sense, no single journal or author emerged as the most dominant on this field. The results also showed that most of the research has been addressed from a qualitative approach. In addition, the most popular study sample were volunteer tourists. In terms of theoretical framework, transformative learning and the theory of planned behavior were the most popular frameworks. In terms of research topics, volunteer tourism has been addressed from various perspectives: studies focused on the experience of key stakeholders, studies aimed at understanding the volunteer tourism industry, studies on volunteer tourism as it relates to sustainable development, and studies focused on volunteer tourism and global citizenship.

However, this SRL has some limitations. First, the review included only peer-reviewed academic articles published in English from January 2010 to December 2021, 11 years in total. What’s more, it did not include proceedings, books, book chapters, and articles published in the mass media. Although the systematic literature review focused on scholarly articles, these documents also contain relevant information of the current state and further research on volunteer tourism. Future research could benefit from the inclusion of publications in different language, year, or academic format in order to provide additional insights in different contexts. Second, the review was carried out based on articles published in WoS and excluded the articles published in other databases. Similarly to the first limitation, considering only one database could potentially narrow the information provided in literature review. Third, the retrospective, observational, and selective nature of literature reviews could potentially limit their practical application in the field (Petticrew & Roberts, 2006). Despite these limitations, literature reviews represent a popular alternative to reflect the major research developments on a specific subject (Bearfield & Eller, 2008, p. 62).