Voluntourism,sensemaking and the leisure-volunteer duality

Abstract

A key feature of voluntourism is that participants expect both to be entertained and to help others to different extents. The duality between the leisure and volunteering aspects of the trip creates ambiguities in expectations. This article focusses on group sensemaking about this leisure-volunteer duality and the role of trip leaders in its management. It uses a case study approach to investigate the behaviours of participants on a voluntourist trip to South America. Among other things, it compares participants’ ex ante expectations with ex post evaluations of the trip and tracks the events that shaped views on the quality of the experience. More concretely, the key events that triggered conflicts between the leisure and volunteer dimensions of the trip are identified and analysed using the factors that influenced the sensemaking outcome. Implications centre on the importance and use of sensemaking tools for voluntourist organisations and trip leaders in the management of the leisure-volunteer tensions that are part and parcel of voluntourism.

Keywords

case study method leisure sensemaking volunteering voluntourism

A key feature of voluntourism is that participants expect both to be entertained and to help others. However, the duality between the leisure and volunteering aspects of the trip create ambiguities in expectations that potentially impact the overall voluntourist experience. There are no explicit studies of this duality and how it should be managed by the sending organisation and its trip leaders.

This article uses a case study approach to investigate a voluntourist trip to Peru. Its overall aim is to document and analyse how the participants make sense of the ambiguities that emerge throughout the trip in relation to the leisure-volunteering tensions. It also investigates the extent to which participants are ‘guided’ in their interpretation by the sending voluntourist organisation which itself operates in a wider context of popular humanitarianism and apolitical community service associated with a development aid model (Mostafanezhad, 2014a; Sin, 2009). ‘Sensemaking’ (Weick et al., 2005) is used to frame the analyses.

More concretely, the article is organised around three objectives. The first is to contrast participants’ ex ante expectations with ex post assessments of the trip, focussing on the leisure-volunteering duality. Second, it tracks the sensemaking factors and events that shaped respondents’ assessments of their experience with reference to this duality. Third, it examines and reflects upon the influence of the sending organisation (trip leaders in particular) on participants’ assessment of their experience, again with a particular emphasis on sensemaking mechanisms and the leisure-volunteer duality. The article discusses the practical and research-based implications of the findings which highlight the distinct nature of voluntourism.

The article is structured as follows: Section ‘Voluntourism’ presents a brief review of the literature on voluntourism. Section ‘Theoretical framework’ defines the sensemaking approach and its suitability to (volun)tourism research. It also discusses the ‘development aid’ mindset that permeates the voluntourism industry and the simplistic assumptions that volunteer tourists can make a difference to ‘backward and needy passive beneficiaries’ (Simpson, 2004). The case study is described in section ‘Sources and methods’, along with details of the methods and data sources. The analyses and findings are discussed in section ‘Analyses and findings’ followed by a discussion in section ‘Discussion’. Brief conclusions are presented in section ‘Conclusions’.

Voluntourism

Although there is no universally accepted definition of voluntourism, one that is often used is provided by Wearing (2001): ‘(T)ourists who volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments, or research into aspects of society or environment’ (p. 1). Similar definitions are proposed by Brown (2005) and McGehee and Santos (2005). There is also that proposed by Uriely et al. (2003), which emphasises the re-evaluation of personal values, making a difference in the world, and a search for the authentic and the experiential.

Voluntourism also overlaps with other forms of niche tourism including ‘gapping’ – the trend of deferring formal study after completing school but before commencing further education (Stehlik, 2010), ‘international service learning’ – combining academic instruction and community-based service (Everingham, 2014), and ‘backpacking’ – a low-cost, non-institutionalised form of travel often carried out in a quest for ‘authenticity’ (Cohen, 2003). Pearce (2005) suggests that the emphasis on defining tourism depends on the goal of the analyst. In this light, this article adheres to the notion that voluntourism remains distinct from other forms of tourism through the inclusion of both leisure and volunteer activities (Andereck et al., 2012).

The relationship between tourism, leisure and volunteering has been discussed extensively in the literature. Some argue that tourism and leisure are different concepts although the majority holds that the two are part of the same spectrum (Carr, 2002). Authors contend that both volunteering and leisure involve ‘unobligated free time’, ‘enjoyment’ and in some cases ‘altruism’ and ‘self-interest’ (Lockstone-Binney et al., 2010). Some volunteering can feel like leisure to participants depending on their motivations (Pearce, 2005), while ‘serious’ leisure can involve volunteering that demands considerable effort, skills and knowledge (Stebbins, 1996). In other words, the distinction between the two concepts is fuzzy (Lockstone-Binney et al., 2010).

For practical reasons, leisure is conceptualised according to Stebbins’ ‘casual leisure’ – that is, activities that are fundamentally hedonic, immediately and intrinsically rewarding and relatively short-lived (Stebbins, 1997), and ‘volunteering’ as activities that are costly in their execution (Cnaan et al., 1996) and prosocial in their nature (Pearce, 2005).

The volunteer-leisure duality of a trip potentially complicates the relationship between the providing organisation and the voluntourist. This article focusses on the management of this tension. Note that it refers to a ‘leisure-volunteer’ – as opposed to a ‘leisure-altruistic’ duality. Volunteering is commonly associated with altruism as a selfless motivational force (Grimm and Needham, 2012; Mustonen, 2007), but it is also inclusive of a form of selfishness or ‘social egoism’ which benefits the volunteer while potentially benefitting local environments and communities (Everingham, 2014; Mustonen, 2007).

The academic literature on voluntourism concentrates primarily on voluntourist motivations (e.g. Brown, 2005; McIntosh and Zahra, 2007; Wearing and McGehee, 2013). This literature documents the complex mix of utilitarian, social and altruistic motives underlying individuals’ decisions to participate in such tours. Another branch of the literature focusses on the impact of voluntourism on the host communities (Andereck et al., 2005; McGehee and Santos, 2005; McIntosh and Zahra, 2007; Uriely et al., 2003), including those that argue that voluntourists neglect the desires of locals, hinder work progress and/or disrupt local economies while reinforcing stereotypes (e.g. Raymond and Hall, 2008).

Related to these are the studies that focus on the wider consequences of voluntourism in perpetuating perceptions of ‘a deceptively singular geopolitical discourse of North-South relations that naturalizes and depoliticizes global economic inequality’ (Mostafanezhad, 2014b: 116). These authors contend that voluntourism reinforces negative stereotypes by portraying aid recipients as less able or inferior and volunteers as superior (Lyons et al.,2012; Sin, 2009). They target the apolitical narrative of the voluntourism industry and demonstrate how it undermines critical engagement with issues of democracy and active citizenship while failing to address the sources of social inequalities (Crossley, 2012; Griffiths, 2014; Simpson, 2004; Vodopivec and Jaffe, 2011).

Some authors focus on the development of guidelines and regulations that maximise the benefits of voluntourism while reducing its negative impacts (e.g. Palacios, 2010; Wearing, 2004). Everingham (2014) suggests repositioning voluntourism away from the development aid perspective and its associated paternalistic undertones by highlighting the intercultural learning exchanges and the mutuality these entail. Simpson (2004) argues that the voluntourism industry lacks a pedagogy of ‘social justice’ that provides participants with frameworks that ask why there are global differences in the first place. An underlying theme is that ‘sending organisations’ are a key factor in good practice. They have the potential to act as catalysts for positive sociocultural change (Palacios, 2010). Consequently, a growing number of studies target the sending organisations – such as Benson and Henderson (2011), Wearing et al. (2005) and Coghlan (2008). Some of these explicitly focus on the provider’s direct management of the voluntourist experience. Raymond and Hall (2008) use appreciative inquiry to explore how organisations can best develop and manage their programmes through volunteer selection, pre-departure preparation, orientation and debriefings. Hammersley (2013) complements these by demonstrating that pre-departure and debrief sessions improve the educational potential of voluntourism programmes.

Another group of studies focusses on the leadership dimensions of voluntourist providers. These include Benson and Blackman (2011) who identify the theoretical aspects of distributed leadership and emphasise forms of leadership that are coherent with the culture of the host community and the voluntourists. There are also McGehee et al. (2008) who highlight the role of providers as gatekeepers between volunteer tourists and hosts in community-based projects. In turn, Coghlan (2008) investigates how the provider can, through its mission statement and promotional material, affect the expectations of its voluntourists and trip leaders. She proposes that organisations develop an awareness of their perceived images in relation to their volunteers’ expectations and needs.

There are studies specifically on tour guides as mediators of the tourist experience (e.g. Cohen, 1985; Dahles, 2002; Jennings and Weiler, 2006; Quiroga, 1990; Woodside, 2011). Poria, Rachel and Bivan(2006) discuss the role of the guide as a facilitator of emotional experience. Coghlan (2008) examines the scientific expedition leaders’ expectations of volunteer tourists and how these clash with volunteers’ reluctance to carry out the repetitive tasks involved in conservation. Blackman and Benson (2010) – probably closest in spirit to what is attempted here – use relationship marketing to illustrate the transactional, career and relational dimensions of the psychological contract between research volunteers and the voluntourism provider. They argue that voluntourism differs from traditional forms of tourism in that its participants expect to add value to society and enjoy the trip and the places visited while the providers expect participants to be useful. They argue that this reciprocal relationship is akin to an employee–employer association with expectations on both sides.

This study builds on these findings by recognising that voluntourism is subject to a complex web of expectations and assumptions and that these can potentially be managed by the sending organisation, trip leaders and wider voluntourism industry.

Theoretical framework

‘Sensemaking’ refers to the collaborative process that creates shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals’ perspectives and interests (Weick et al., 2005). It is a useful framework in the study of how individuals collectively make sense of new information in complex situations. Unsurprisingly, a number of authors have used sensemaking to study tourism-related phenomenon (Bosangit et al., 2009; Cohen, 1985; Jennings and Weiler, 2006; Woodside, 2011). These studies recognise that in a tourism context, sensemaking is ongoing and largely done spontaneously – that is, without ‘sensemaking mindfulness’ (Woodside, 2011) – although organisational ‘mediators’ can play an active role in its management. In the specific context of voluntourism, a sensemaking analysis should also account for the neo-liberalism discourse that frames the industry narrative and promotes a model of development as something that can be ‘done’ by non-skilled but enthusiastic volunteer tourists (Simpson, 2004; Sin, 2009).

There are five major ‘generic’ sensemaking factors:

The identity of the actors – who they think they are at a particular time and place – shapes how events are interpreted (Thurlow and Mills, 2009). In the tourism context, the focus is typically on the tourist and the identity consciously or unconsciously adopted in a given moment (Holloway, Green, and Holloway,2011; Jennings and Weiler, 2006). The discourse surrounding voluntourism encourages participants to see themselves as ‘givers’, as ‘having and/or knowing more’, as being ‘richer’ and as providing aid to the ‘poor’ (Mostafanezhad, 2013; Simpson, 2004; Sin, 2009). Neutralising constructs and other psychosocial defence mechanisms may also be used in response to voluntourists’ encounters with poverty and hardship (Crossley, 2012).

Opportunities to narrate and converse with others help build and reinforce the collective meaning of events (Abolafia, 2010). In a tourism context, the length and structure of the trip are prime determinants of those opportunities although group size, the physical environment (including physical proximity with members of the host community and participants (Griffiths, 2014)) and the demographics of the participants will also indirectly determine group interactions (Quiroga, 1990) and the level of reflexivity surrounding events (Lyons et al., 2012). In the context of voluntourism, language barriers can emphasise perceived differences between host communities and volunteers, reinforcing popular notions of ‘otherness’ (Simpson, 2004).

Opportunities for reflection and retrospection of the past events can support sensemaking. Again, the structure of the trip (e.g. length, itineraries, activities) will impact the cognitive processes of the group around recently experienced events (Lyons et al., 2012; Quiroga, 1990), while photographs, group reunions and social media will impact assessments of the experience in the longer term (Pearce, 2005). Mostafanezhad (2014b) and Crossley (2012) reflect that photographic surveillance (including social media) in voluntourism tends to perpetuate postcolonial relations of power between the gazer and the gazee emphasising the inequality of the encounter.

Preferences for plausibility versus accuracy in accounts of events and contexts will impact sensemaking (Abolafia, 2010). In most tourism settings, if the account appears plausible and is sufficient to provide the necessary meaning to take the next step, that is accurate enough for the individual to act (Cohen, 1985). In the context of voluntourism, Lyons et al. (2012) point to the lack of reflexivity in neoliberal interpretations of cosmopolitanism, while Simpson (2004) emphasises the absence of pedagogy for social justice. These highlight a general preference for plausibility over accuracy in voluntourist settings.

Points of reference or familiar cues will contribute to sensemaking by linking ideas to broader networks of meaning (Weick et al., 2005). Tourists are prone to ‘altercasting’ – or ‘… the structuring of the tourist roles by the strong presence and organisation of others’ (Pearce, 2005: 24), cues that trigger particular tourist behaviours and/or role ambiguity (Carr, 2002; Dahles, 2002; Holloway, Green and Holloway 2011). Voluntourism is particularly known for its promotion of simplistic models of development in which unskilled volunteers can make a difference while having fun and/or acquiring skills and experience (Lyons et al., 2012; Vodopivec and Jaffe, 2011).¹

These five factors are used to characterise the sensemaking frame that emerged during the trip. We also recognise that the sensemaking that takes place in voluntourism will differ from other tourism contexts given its leisure-volunteer tensions, the neo-liberalist context that frame these trips and the pressures voluntourists are under to come to a quick understanding of their new but temporary settings (Everingham, 2014; Liao-Troth and Dunn, 1999; Simpson, 2004). This implies that there may be a separate role for the sending organisation, trip leaders and the industry more generally, in the management of the sensemaking that takes place in voluntourism.

Sources and methods

The holistic approach offered by the case study method is particularly suited to voluntourism research since it permits the gathering of observations from different sources in a ‘real-life’ setting without knowing ex ante which events will be particularly meaningful in shaping the experience. The case study conducted in this article is inherently interpretive since it uses an emic perspective to gather insights into the voluntourist experience in relation to events that embody leisure-volunteer tensions (Pearce, 2005; Wearing, 2004). It is part deductive – since it hypothesises that voluntourism is inherently subject to leisure-volunteer tensions, that organisational sensemaking and neo-liberalist values shape participants’ assessment of their experience and that the sending organisation can influence this process (positively or negatively) – and part inductive/exploratory as it identifies and characterises the context in which leisure-volunteer tensions arise (Van Thiel, 2014).

The trip to Peru was selected on practical grounds although its general features (trip length, cost, activities, facilities, age distribution of participants) are shared by those of 12 other sending organisations initially considered. The selected organisation was willing to collaborate from the research project’s planning phase to its completion. The timing (summer term) and trip destination (Spanish-speaking country) also influenced the final selection. A triangulation strategy enhanced the internal validity of the information gathered. but the use of a single, specific tour implies that the findings are inherently weaker in external validity (Van Thiel, 2014).

More concretely, without knowing when or how tensions would emerge, a variety of data sources (participants, sending organisation, trip leaders, researcher diary) and mixed methods (questionnaires, diary method, document analyses, semi-structured interviews) were used to gather detailed information about the participants’ experience in relation to the leisure-volunteer phenomenon. Sensemaking events were identified ex post based on the data gathered and the framework described above. Efforts were exerted throughout the analyses to highlight the role of the sending organisation and trip leaders in managing the leisure-volunteer duality.

The following subsections describe the case and the data sources and methods:

The case

The provider of this 6-week trip to Peru is based in Toronto. Its website promotes ‘backpacking with a purpose’ and recruits volunteer travellers who are not looking for ‘pat-on-the-back volunteer projects’ but ‘ethical travel packed with adventure, community service, and education’. The website also emphasises the importance of collaborating with the local community ‘in solidarity’, that their programme doesn’t just ‘plop’ a volunteer into a project but combines ‘community service with an educational program that (teaches) team members the context needed to understand local challenges before solving them’. The ‘context’ they refer to does not entail a critique of the development aid model or its neo-liberalism undertone (Simpson, 2004) but recognises that not all forms of volunteering are effective on a practical level. The website doesn’t mention voluntourism explicitly but uses the expression ‘volunteer travel’.

The provider offers approximately 35 different trips a year across South America, South-East Asia and East Africa, each with 8–14 participants who are accompanied by two trips leaders (one male, one female). Although they have shorter trips and offer ‘custom-made’ trip, most of the ones on offer are 6-weeks long and take place during the summer term. The fee for a 6-week trip is approximately US$3000, including a ‘community’ contribution of US$580 per participant. The trip destinations remain fairly constant although their website states that programmes change every year based on the needs of their partners.

This article focusses on a trip to Peru from 13 May to 26 June 2012. During these 6 weeks, the 10 participants and two trip leaders worked with local organisations on sustainability projects in rural communities with scheduled periods of leisure, tourism and independent travel time (ITT). More concretely, the trip was divided into seven phases: two entirely dedicated to volunteering (phases 3 and 4) and two dedicated to tourism and leisure (phases 5 and 6, respectively). Three segments were devoted to education/training (phase 2), travel and (dis-)orientation (phases 1 and 7) – in other words, less clearly defined on the volunteering-leisure spectrum (Carr, 2002). The trip’s agenda and the marketing material used to promote it on the website suggest that the trip conforms to the definition of voluntourism by Wearing (2001) discussed above although the sending organisation uses the term ‘volunteer traveller’.

The first 5 days (out of 42) was the travel to and orientation in Lima (phase 1). During this time, the volunteers attended Spanish classes and toured cultural sites to facilitate their social integration. Phase 2 began – after a 20-hour bus ride – in Cuzco. There, the volunteers were introduced to life in the mountains and taught about sustainable agricultural methods and local culture. The participants subsequently volunteered on two consecutive community projects. The first of these involved providing manual labour in the construction of a large greenhouse on a farm on the outskirts of Cuzco (phase 3). The other was further afield in the ‘Four Lakes’ region and entailed renovation of a dilapidated children’s playground. The work was manual although some time was spent interacting with children inside the local school to demonstrate the benefits of physical activity. The fifth phase of the trip involved more traditional group tourism activities (that is, visiting the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu) and leisure-oriented pursuits such as hiking, biking and zip-lining. This was followed by a few days of ITT which provided participants with the opportunity to explore the host region independently or with a few members of the group (phase 6). The seventh and final phase – ‘disorientation’ – included debriefing sessions during which participants were given the opportunity to discuss and review their trip before travelling back.

The before-and-after questionnaires

The questionnaires provide information about participants’ background (identity), expectations (points of references), motivations (volunteer versus leisure) and their assessments of the experience once completed. The first of these (‘before’ questionnaire) contains approximately 13 semi-structured questions, each with one to three sub-questions (25 in total). The after questionnaire is shorter (seven in total), but five of these are open questions that gather information about their experience. The ‘before’ questionnaire includes a table containing 21 possible answers to the question ‘I am participating in this project because …’, while the ‘after’ questionnaire contains a similar table with 21 corresponding statements to the question ‘I am happy I participated in this project because …’. Respondents were asked to rate these statements along a continuous response scale that varies between 1 (disagree) and 5 (agree).² The before questionnaire was administered during the bus ride to Cuzco (phase 1), while the second was completed on the third to last day of the trip before the participants travelled home (phase 7). These questionnaires have no statistical validity – they are simply tools to gather a large amount of information efficiently with minimum interpretive bias so as to help triangulate the information gathered through the diary. Their design was informed by empirical studies on voluntourism (e.g. Andereck et al., 2012; Coghlan, 2008) and those on volunteer motivations more generally (e.g. Grimm and Needham, 2012). These instruments were pre-tested on graduate students and approved by the University of Ottawa’s Ethics Committee (File 03-12-03). Trip participants were not obliged to participate although all accepted to do so.

Participant observations

One of the two researchers on this project was also a participant to the trip. She kept a diary to narrate and contextualise the events that took place during the trip while documenting perceived changes in mood, group dynamics and triggers of tension (Griffiths, 2014). She was also asked to examine how the two trip leaders engaged with the group. At the start of the trip, she was given permission to brief the group about her research, their involvement in the process and how their anonymity would be protected (i.e. individuals were coded randomly R1 to R10 and trip leaders as L1 and L2). Her role was therefore overt in that the other participants, trip leaders and the sending organisation knew she was conducting academic research (her own responses appear under R5).

Although she made every effort not to alter the flow of interactions between group members unnaturally for the purpose of the research, by studying the setting in which she had become fully affiliated as a trip participant, she de facto became a ‘complete-member researcher’ and wrote the diary as a ‘subjectively lived experience’ (Adler and Adler, 1994: 380). The trip was physically and emotionally demanding, which meant she could only devote an average 90 minutes per day to her diary. This meant adopting a systematic ‘selective observation’ approach as opposed to a ‘descriptive’ or ‘focused’ observation one (Angrosino and Mays de Pérez, 2000) – that is, she concentrated on events where she perceived changes in mood, tensions and/or changes in the group dynamic highlighting interactions with trip leaders. Her entries typically begin with a relatively short factual description of the day (planned activities, temperature, food, assessment of facilities, etc.) followed by an account of events she felt were relevant to the study. These events were selected on the basis of the affective and emotional experience they generated among members of the group – the ‘embodied experience’ of voluntourism (Crossley, 2012; Griffiths, 2014; Mostafanezhad, 2013). The diary also documents her own frustrations, satisfactions, views and impressions of the day’s events.

While this information was triangulated with the data obtained from the ‘after’ questionnaires and the interviews with the trip leaders, her imprint on the interpretation of the events qualifies the diary part of the research as autoethnography (Butz and Besio, 2009; Ellis and Bochner, 2000). As in Sin (2009), our researcher ‘lived, worked and played with them (trip participants). There was hardly a line between what constituted research and what did not’ (p. 487). The selection of what is observed, recorded and how it is interpreted is highly subjective, but it is precisely this ‘insiderness’ and ‘intergratedness’ that allow in-depth explorations of volunteer tourism (Griffiths, 2014; Sibley, 1995; Sin, 2009).

Her overall distance or ‘positionality’ in terms of race, nationality, age, gender, social and economic status was significantly distant to that of the host community members but relatively close to the other trip participants (the focus of the research) – that is, aside from one male trip leader, all participants were female, Canadian (except for one American), between 18 and 30 years old, current university students or recent graduates, and of similar social and economic status (Madge, 1993). Her interest and prior research on voluntourism were, however, unique. These factors situate the field-researcher’s account of events as they relate to the participants and their interactions with the host communities and qualify the generalizability and neutrality of the results (Rose, 1997).

Documents from the sending organisation

The sending organisation’s online literature was used as a source of additional information. The organisation has a very informative website that provides detailed information about their programmes (trip description, fees, dates, safety and security information, access to financial support, and customised programmes), their team, the application process, past financial reports, and an interesting published declaration of the intentions, motives and the values that best represent the organisation and is meant to guide behaviour and decision-making during the trip (‘Backpacktivist Manifesto’). All the organisation documents used in our analyses were available online.

Semi-structured interviews

Semi-structured interviews with the two trip leaders (one male, one female) were conducted by the field researcher on the second last day of the tour and lasted approximately 45 minutes. The 12 semi-structured questions were loosely inspired by Coghlan (2008) and Blackman and Benson (2010). The aim was to gain background information on the trip leaders, their experience and motivations in joining this particular provider. The trip leaders are similar in demographic terms to the participants except that both were experienced travellers, but only one of them had led a group before. They both spoke English and Spanish (one also spoke Italian and French) and were in excellent physical shape. Neither of them intended a career as trip leaders, but their current role seems to quench a strong desire for adventure. The responses to the questions about the sending organisation brought few new elements to the information already gathered – that is, they stuck very closely to the marketing material found on the organisation’s website and did not respond easily to probes encouraging them to be more ‘adventurous’ or critical in their reflections. Due to unforeseen circumstances, these interviews took place late in the day when full cooperation was perhaps less likely.

Analyses and findings

The before-and-after questionnaires provide a useful snapshot of the participants, their expectations and post-trip reflections on the Peru experience. Table 1 synthesises demographic details of the participants and their responses to the open and semi-structured questions contained in the two questionnaires.

Table 1.

Overview of responses to the questionnaires.

Before questionnaire	Occupation	● 10 University Students
	Status	● 10 singles
	Gender	● 10 females
	Nationality	● 9 Canadians; 1 American
	Volunteer experience	● 10 participated in volunteering activities in the last 18 months ● 4 volunteered abroad ● 10 knew someone who had volunteered abroad
	Plan ‘B’ (if application was rejected)? (not mutually exclusive)	● 4 would study ● 5 would work ● 2 would travel ● 7 would volunteer domestically
	Most important decision factors in selecting provider xx?	● Affordability and control of expenditures (transparency) ● Community engagement and types of volunteer projects ● Age and interest of other travellers ● One participant referred to the Yoga component
After Questionnaire	Most memorable moment on this trip?	Testimonials vary in length. Nine participants refer to activities involving the host community. A few (2) also refer to ‘bonding’ events between members of the group. One said she had none.
	Most challenging moment on this trip?	Testimonials vary in length. Nine refer to ‘sickness’ being a problem. Some (3) refer to facilities and cleanliness. One participant found leaving the host community challenging.
	Have you changed as a result of this trip?	Testimonials vary in length. There is a general satisfaction at having survived the tour. Many (6) referred to having a more tolerant attitude towards others. Two focussed on the practical skills they learned. One says she caught the travel bug while another says the trip made her feel more ‘patriotic’. One says that she is now convinced ‘that developing countries might not be behind the technology curve’, while another states that her political views have changed.
	Do your original answers surprise you in any way?	● 3 felt the trip progressed as expected ● 1 overrated her expectations of a life-changing experience ● 1 found the volunteering ‘pointless’ ● 3 underrated the dirt/bugs/living conditions ● 3 underrated how much they would learn from their hosts ● 5 underrated the importance of other participants

Based on the notion that participants are likely to remember the trip positively if their expectations are surpassed (Andereck et al., 2012), we also used the questionnaires to collect ‘before-and-after’ scores of how well voluntourists’ expectations were met (Table 2). On 70 percent of the items, participants felt that the tour had met or exceeded their expectations. Two of the six items that participants felt hadn’t met their expectations relate to the impact of the volunteering on the host community (‘I made a difference’; ‘I helped others’), two refer to the more utilitarian or leisure dimension of the trip organisation (‘the XX package was very good’; ‘XX made me feel secure throughout the trip’) and two refer to the life-changing value of the trip (‘I got a new perspective on things’; ‘the experience will be life changing’).

Table 2.

Before-and-after scores of the voluntourism experience.^a

	Before	Score	After	Score	+/−
	‘I am participating in this project because …’	Score	‘I participated in this project because …’	Score	+/−
Volunteering ————————————————- Leisure	I will meet new people.	4.45	I met new people.	4.89	+
	I wanted to visit XX with people my age.	2.86	I visited XX with people my age.	3.66	+
	I will enjoy the travel.	4.36	I enjoyed the travel.	4.55	+
	I could not afford to spend 6 weeks in Peru otherwise.	2.86	I could not afford to spend 6 weeks in Peru otherwise.	3.59	+
	I can tell others about the experience.	3.91	I can tell others about the experience.	4.32	+
	XX provides a secure trip.	4.18	XX made me feel secure throughout the trip.	4.06	−
	It provides an escape from my everyday life.	2.61	It provided an escape from my everyday life.	3.48	+
	The XX package is really good.	4.59	The XX package was very good.	3.82	−
	I can talk about it at job interviews.	2.45	I will talk about it at job interviews.	4.32	+
	I will learn or practise Spanish.	4.00	I have learned or practise Spanish.	4.16	+
	Everyone seems to have volunteering experience.	2.23	I now have volunteering experience.	3.36	+
	I will learn valuable leadership skills.	3.68	I learned valuable leadership skills.	3.98	+
	It might help me secure paid employment.	1.95	It might help me secure paid employment.	2.77	+
	I will learn how to work in a team.	2.93	I learned how to work in a team.	3.50	+
	I wanted to get a new perspective on things.	4.36	I got a new perspective on things.	4.11	−
	It might make me feel better about myself.	2.52	It made me feel better about myself.	2.93	+
	The experience will be life changing.	4.18	The experience will be life changing.	3.61	−
	It will relieve some of the guilt I feel about being more fortunate than others.	1.5	It relieved some of the guilt I felt about being more fortunate than others.	1.82	+
	I want to make a difference.	4.18	I made a difference.	3.66	−
	It is important to help others.	4.48	I helped others.	4.16	−
	I know people who benefitted from this type of help.	3.58	I got to know the local people we worked with.^b	4.16	NA

Questions are reorganised according to their leisure-volunteering focus.

‘After’ and ‘before’ question cannot be directly compared.

While it is not possible to account for all sensemaking opportunities that arose during the trip, the after questionnaire and the diary were used to identify and select events that exemplify the leisure-volunteer tensions discussed above. The retained events were mentioned by at least four of the participants in the ‘after’ questionnaire and recorded in the diary on at least three separate days. The events include (1) the isolation of the first (of two) volunteer projects from the host community, (2) the realisation that Quechua (a pre-Inca native language) is very different from Spanish, (3) the prolonged travel illness of one of the participants and (4) the running out of supplies.

The analysis of these events is framed by the five sensemaking factors discussed earlier – that is, the identity of the participants, the dynamic of interactions among the participants, opportunities for retrospection/reflection, the accuracy of accounts and points of reference. Particular attention is paid to the role of trip leaders in this process. We also acknowledge the neo-liberalism discourse that frames the voluntourism industry narrative and the potential impact it may exert on the group’s sensemaking.

Organisational sensemaking factors in voluntourism

An analysis of the selection process highlights the efforts made by the provider in identifying and retaining participants with the ‘right’ identity. The website explains how candidates must first write about their motivations and expectations. Interviews with the trip leaders suggest that these essays help the organisation ‘carefully screen’ applicants and mitigate some of the motivational issues identified in Grimm and Needham (2012).³

If the application is retained, an interview follows. The website clearly targets university students, and all participants on the Peru trip were university students (and all but one was Canadian). All were female although the publicity in the documentation is gender-neutral. While roughly 70 percent of all voluntourists are women (Palk, 2010), the two trip leaders agree that the gender bias was ‘unusually strong’ for that tour.

The organisation’s ‘Backpacktivist Manifesto’ highlights the nine character traits participants must display during the trip: the capacity to adapt, optimism, curiosity, conscientiousness, humility, respect, solidarity, group-focus and leadership. The capacity to adapt is flagged up as the most important. The group is asked to study the manifesto prior to departure and the diary refers to the extent to which trip leaders refer to it throughout the journey. The organisation appears to seek and select candidates who are likely to share these traits, and trip leaders promote this identity during the trip.

The voluntourist organisation also determines the structural elements of the trip which are explained in general terms on the website. The destination, the mode and length of travel, the time participants spend together and most of the activities they do together and with the host community follow from this schedule, while roommates, work groups and, in some cases, place settings at meals are determined on site by the trip leaders. The organisation thus has a major impact on the dynamic of interactions between participants. Moreover, the remote nature of the chosen destinations meant no electronic communications – that is, the travellers had very little access to life outside the host community. This isolation helped participants bond with each other and also led to ‘cabin fever’, while the physical and emotional challenges of the trip and the lack of home comforts accentuated the fatigue element. The organisation allowed for ITT towards the end of the trip, and the ‘after’ questionnaire responses suggests that this was instrumental in the overall appreciation of the tour. The trip to Peru also included a ‘yoga and meditation’ component that provided physical and mental relief to its participants.

The third sensemaking factor is the opportunity for retrospection and reflection which is facilitated by the intensive proximity between group members. Participants are also asked to attend ‘peeluts’ – the Hebrew word for group meeting – at the request of trip leaders.⁴ While these almost daily meetings are described as forums on the organisation’s website, the diary documents how they are used by trip leaders to remind participants of their ‘Backpacktivism’ and help them make sense of the day’s events. While a few participants described these gatherings as ‘promotional’ (7 June, R8, R10),⁵ others admit that as new voluntourists, these were welcome (R2, R3, R7: ‘after’ questionnaires; 16 May, R2).

The fourth sensemaking factor focusses on the accuracy of the accounts. The need for accuracy was (aside from transport and meeting information) secondary to the need for plausibility on this trip. The group tasks were relatively simple although labour-intensive, and there were few ‘critical’ and unexpected situations calling for emergency decision-making. Nonetheless, the accuracy factor surfaced in relation to the leisure-volunteer tension on two occasions. The first involved participants questioning the value of the first project – that is, they felt its ‘usefulness’ for the community limited. These feelings were shared by almost all the participants (25 May, R5). These tensions mirror Blackman and Benson’s (2010) claim that voluntourists expect to be useful and their work to have a positive impact. The second arose mid-trip when participants started questioning the legitimacy of the trip leaders. Participants felt that a non-fee-paying trip leader was not in a position to lecture them about the hardship of volunteering. The diary narrates these frustrations. The following quote was made by respondent R8 after the peelut on 10 June and was accompanied by several nods from other participants: ‘We had another stupid peelut tonight […] I’m getting really tired of them because they seem forced and fake’. Plausibility of the message and its messenger(s) is required if the organisation is to play a leading role in sensemaking.

The final factor is the set of reference points and cues used by the organisation to facilitate sensemaking. The organisation was well equipped in this respect and the trip leaders frequently used cues from the Backpacktivist Manifesto (16 May, R5). The semi-structured interviews with the two trip leaders showed that these cues were well anchored in the leaders’ discourse and used to manage leisure-volunteer tensions that arose during the trip.

Four sensemaking events

The first sensemaking event is the discovery that the first community project (building a greenhouse for a local farm) was located at a distance from the local village. Participants felt they were working in a vacuum with no meaningful contacts with the community. They also thought it was unclear who the project was helping. The work was very physical and participants were unused to life in remote Peru. The following quotes by R1 and R6 were transcribed in the diary on 26 and 27 May and exemplify the sentiments of R2, R4, R7 and R8:

R1:‘Maybe I was expecting something different than what this trip offers but I was under the impression that we would be working with the locals on a project they chose.’ ‘[…] to help, not to be given a vague outline of what has to happen and then left to labour on our own with no clue as to whether or not we are doing it right. I seriously hope that our next project is run differently – I am completely unimpressed.’

R6:‘This project was so not what I and many here were expecting. So many of us are looking forward to moving on.’

Three organisational sensemaking factors were instrumental in managing this event: first, the interventions by trip leaders who promoted the unseen benefits of the work to the community and built a convincing narrative about the value-added of the project (30 May, L1, L2). The second was the structure of the trip – that is, the project came to an end and the group moved on to a much more engaging project at the heart of the host community. The dynamic of interactions changed, and although participants spoke critically of the first project, the second project became key to their assessment of the volunteer component of the trip. Participants suggested that they ‘forgot’ about the first project by the time the second one was completed (R3, R7: diary; R9: ‘after’ questionnaire). Third, the relatively new voluntourist identity of the participants meant that they were unsure what to expect: ‘We talked today about voluntourism and what it means and whether it is good or bad […]’ (16 May, R4). The trip leaders argued that the tour was not ‘voluntourism’ and that what they were doing was much more authentic, useful and non-commercial (L1, L2: diary).⁶ At this relatively early stage of the trip, the peeluts, references to ‘Backpacktivists’ and the briefings of the trip leaders weighted heavily on the group’s sensemaking.

The second event is the realisation that Quechua is very different from Spanish. Participants had taken intensive Spanish lessons and expected opportunities to perfect their skills with the host communities – as advertised on the website. Unfortunately, very few from the host community spoke Spanish (they spoke Quechua) and respondents were disappointed. The diary mentions these frustrations on a number of occasions – the following quote exemplify these feelings: ‘the language barrier made it hard for me to actually converse (in Spanish) with my fisherman partner’ (3 June, R9). While not strictly a ‘casual’ leisure pursuit (Stebbins, 1997), language skills acquisition is a selfish – as opposed to selfless – motive. The diary suggests that the sensemaking factor of identity and reference cues were particularly useful for the group. By reminding participants that the Backpacktivist has the ‘capacity to adapt’ and highlighting the non-utilitarian purpose of the trip, trip leaders were able to help the group accept their disappointment (4 June, L1, L2; semi-structured interviews). The trip leaders could not speak Quechua but were able to draw up a list of key words and phrases relating to the group’s tasks to help improve the communications (3 June, R5). At this stage, participants did not question the trip leaders’ legitimacy.

The third event was the prolonged travel illness of one of the participants. While the group showed initial empathy, disparaging comments emerged at the end of the third week when fatigue started to set in. The diary documents how every participant suffered at least one form of illness during their trip (e.g. altitude sickness, food poisoning). While most anticipated such ailments, few were prepared for the additional burden on the remainder of the group. One participant in particular stayed in bed for long periods of the trip. Comments along the lines of ‘it’s not fair’ (23 May, R4), ‘dealing with illness of others’ and ‘members of the team being lazy or not working’ (4 and 10 June, R1, R8) became more frequent and were mentioned by seven respondents in the ‘after’ questionnaires. The opportunities for reflection and retrospection were instrumental in allowing the group to move on. The dynamic of interactions was interrupted and improved by the period of leisure that followed.

The fourth event was the seemingly innocuous problem of hygiene supply shortages. The diary reveals that participants claimed that ‘we have paid for basic accommodation which should include toilet rolls’ (15 May, R2). Tensions were mounting – participants were getting physically tired and emotionally fatigued while increasingly missing ‘comfortable’ surroundings: ‘I’m finding it hard to get truly invested and excited about being here […] my heart just wants me to be home taking advantage of basic necessities’ (16 May, R8). Later on, participants started questioning the legitimacy of their trip leaders. Since they were not paying, ‘… they weren’t in a position to tell them to “suck it up”’ (10 June, R8). Trip leaders seemingly became disconnected from group sensemaking. Retrospection and reflection started taking place in informal settings (i.e. outside the organised peeluts) without cues to ‘Backpacktivists’ (‘I understand why they do it/why it’s important but I’ve had my fill’; 7 June, R10). Again, this period of ‘runaway sensemaking’ came to an end when the trip progressed to its next leisure-oriented and ITT phases. They returned refreshed after spending a few days living away from other participants (23 June, R5). The timing of this leisure was pre-determined by the organisation in its scheduling of the trip which probably anticipated the general fatigue of the group. Participants returned to the group for one last ‘disorientation’ phase with opportunities for group reflection and retrospection. By this stage, participants were relaxed and once again sensemaking as a group was inclusive of the trip leaders who reminded participants of the mission they embarked on weeks ago, highlighted successful events and used questions and probes to guide participants through their reflection – ‘the main thing we had to do today was the trip run […] after going through and reliving good and bad times we got changed and headed out to watch the sunset’ (26 June, R5). It is worth noting that the tensions over ‘Quechua’ appear to have been positively resolved by the end of the trip, and there is little mention of this event in the ‘after’ questionnaire. (Table 3 summarises the analyses.)

Table 3.

Sensemaking events and factors.

Events	Factors
	Identity of the participants	Dynamic of interactions	Reflection/retrospection	Accuracy of accounts	Cues/references	Summary
‘Remoteness of community project (I)’	● Inexperienced but eager voluntourists	● Few interactions with host community ● Remote location	● Peeluts and trip leaders are instrumental in explaining unseen volunteering benefits of the project.	● Participants settle for a plausible account of the altruistic value of their work	● Past experience of the trip leaders. ● Backpacktivist manifesto ● Neo-liberalism development aid model	● Participants question the value of the project to the host community ● Timing, peeluts and references to leaders’ experience help participants endorse the altruistic value of the project
‘Quechua, not Spanish’	● Utilitarian vs Backpacktivist identity	● Tour includes prep-Spanish lessons	● Group leaders and peeluts help promote altruism and dissipate group’s disappointment	● Participants assumed opportunities to speak Spanish	● Backpacktivist traits promotes ‘capacity to adapt’ ● Manifesto prioritises volunteering over leisure	● Spanish prep course reinforced the belief that participants would practice their language skills ● Peeluts, trip leaders, and Backpacktivist Manifesto mitigate disappointment.
‘Prolonged travel illness of participants’	● Volunteer identity strong but excludes empathy for teammates	● Some participants are ill ● Resentment against some participants sets in ● Project end and appeases resentment	● Backpacktivist cue promotes ‘capacity to adapt’ ● Peeluts effective in rallying the team ● Trip leaders play an important role	● Value of an additional worker unclear ● Different tolerance to illness	● References to concept of ‘fairness’ by participants.	● Lack of empathy for some participants ● Peeluts and trip leader restore constructive sensemaking ● Ending of project restores empathy for unwell participants
‘Running out of hygiene supplies’	● Leisure identity dominates	● Participants are physically and mentally tired ● Dynamic of interactions changed with leisure and ITT	● Peeluts less effective ● Reflection and retrospection takes place outside peeluts without trip leaders	● Participants talk about trip leaders in their absence ● Difficult to restore ‘accuracy’ of accounts	● Backpacktivist manifesto less effective ● Temporary loss of legitimacy of trip leaders	● Runaway sensemaking. ● Halted by ITT ● Participants enjoying their leisure.

ITT: independent travel time.

Discussion

Seven implications are derived and together highlight the distinctiveness of voluntourism while advancing our understanding of this particular form of tourism:

1. Voluntourist organisations can benefit from identifying and developing sensemaking mechanisms. Tours typically involve unpredicted events and periods of participant physical and emotional fatigue that require individuals to come together as a group to make sense of their environment collectively and determine what to do next. How and the ease with which these questions are resolved are essential to the overall experience of participants and help bridge gaps between expectations and perceptions of the trip.

2. Voluntourist organisations can invest in the creation of references and cues that facilitate group sensemaking. A ‘representative voluntourist’ can be created so as to convey the identity participants are expected to adopt during their tour. It is also possible to link this identity to a pedagogy for ‘social justice’ agenda as advocated by Simpson (2004).

While some authors (Hammersley, 2013; Raymond and Hall, 2008) promote the use of volunteer selection techniques, pre-departure preparation, orientation and debriefing sessions (to enhance the educational potential of the experience), few refer to what would amount to sensemaking sessions during the trip. While some authors refer to the role of emotions in the voluntourism experience (Crossley, 2012; Griffiths, 2014; Mostafanezhad, 2013), a strategic sensemaking approach can help staff (trip leaders in particular) identify and manage the leisure-volunteer tensions that emerge in the voluntourism context. A symbolic representation of a voluntourist creates identity and behavioural cues that facilitate the management of these group tensions and engages the participant in a critical reflection of his/her experience.

3. Organisations vary in the leisure-volunteer focus of their offerings. A good understanding of what this balance is and how it is perceived by participants throughout the trip’s sensemaking ‘events’ is important to ensure greater congruence between expectations and perceptions of the trip.

4. Although it is difficult to predict exactly when a sensemaking event will occur or what it will be, the structure of the trip impacts the dynamic of group interactions. Sensemaking events can become non-events by a sudden change in activity/site. Scheduling trips that offer a certain rhythm and accounts for participant fatigue can facilitate positive sensemaking.

Numerous studies investigate voluntourist motivations, but few examine the fragile balance between the leisure and volunteer dimensions of a trip. Sending organisations need to communicate effectively the volunteer intensity of their tours on their website and manage the scheduling of leisure and volunteer activities throughout the trip so as to dilute leisure-volunteer tensions. As McGehee (2002) and Mostafanezhad (2014a) report, many voluntourist organisations do not recognise themselves as being part of the tourism industry and insist that their organisations are anchored in the volunteer sector.

5. Regular peeluts are an effective sensemaking mechanism for voluntourist organisations. As long as the trip leaders are perceived as ‘legitimate’, these meetings help participants make sense of the day’s events and readjust their perceptions.

6. Sensemaking can occur in informal spaces outside peeluts, particularly once the participants know each other well. Organisations should train trip leaders to recognise, facilitate and direct these occurrences so volunteers come away with their expectations surpassed and perhaps more in tune with the wider development aid debates.

7. The organisation should appreciate the important role trip leaders play in sensemaking. They should also recognise that their status and remuneration raise legitimacy issues if and when they become pro-active in the group’s sensemaking. This is particularly so when there are strong volunteer-leisure tensions.

These three implications pertain directly to the trip leaders. The tourism literature offers discussions of the role of tour guides as mediators of the tourist experience (Cohen, 1985; Dahles, 2002; Jennings and Weiler, 2006; Poria et al., 2006; Quiroga, 1990; Woodside, 2011) and as manager of expectations in the context of voluntourism (Coghlan, 2008). Voluntourism is particularly laden with role ambiguities and emotional challenges which if left unresolved can impact negatively the experience of the participants. This is particularly true for trips that involve additional physical demands on the groups (Pearce, 2005). This study has shown that trip leaders can help participants deal with these emotional up and downs. ‘Peeluts’ provide excellent opportunities for group sensemaking by facilitating feedback, reflection and retrospection, but the trip leaders should also be trained to recognise the sensemaking that goes on in informal spaces. Trip leaders are less effective if they lose their legitimacy as was the case in this study when participants focussed on the fact that they were remunerated.

Conclusions

This article investigates a voluntourist trip to Peru using a case study. It argues that such trips are invariably associated with participant fatigue and unpredicted events that exacerbate leisure-volunteer tensions and require ‘successful’ group sensemaking. It contrasts participants’ ex ante and ex post assessments of the trip to determine which dimensions of the experience met or failed to meet expectations. Using a variety of methods, it documents and analyses how the participants made collective sense of the leisure-volunteer ambiguities that emerged throughout the trip, highlighting the role played by the various sensemaking factors and the wider neo-liberalist discourse that frames the voluntourism industry. The extent to which participants were ‘guided’ in their interpretation by the trip leaders and the sending organisation is also emphasised throughout.

The article’s principal message is that trip leaders and their sending organisations can, to a limited extent, manipulate perceptions by identifying and managing the sensemaking mechanisms at their disposal.

There are of course many caveats to this study. First, the analyses are focussed on a specific case study suggesting strong internal validity but poor external validity. If such trips were repeated with different cohorts, it would be interesting to compare and contrast how sensemaking unfolds throughout the various tours and draw more general conclusions about the added value of the trip leaders’ management of the leisure-volunteer duality as well as the nature of the events that exacerbate such tensions.

A second concern is that part of the data collection involved participant observation by one of the two researchers such that diary entries will invariably be subject to the usual unconscious biases and recall difficulties. Moreover, as an active member of the group she may have had an impact on the unfolding of events and sensemaking outcomes. The field researcher was aware of these potential effects and the findings were triangulated with other data sources so as to limit these issues.

Our third concern is the focus on the leisure-volunteer duality. The concept of ‘volunteer’ and ‘leisure’ are difficult to delineate clearly and add an additional layer of ambiguity to the analyses and discussion.

Finally, we highlight implications of our findings for sending organisations but without costing their full impact. Training trip leaders and/or selecting those who show potential as ‘good’ sensemaking mediators may entail costs on the organisation which are not accounted for here.

Despite these caveats, the article provides additional evidence that voluntourism is a genuinely distinctive form of tourism that requires its own specialised management instruments.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Catherine Liston-Heyes is an economist by training with a PhD degree from McGill University. Since 1992, she has been a member of faculty at Université Laval (Québec, Canada), the School of Management at Royal Holloway College, University of London (UK), and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa (Canada) where she currently works. She has regularly published in the areas of regulation, self-regulation and corporate social responsibility. She has extensive experience in teaching university-level executive and professional in London, Hong Kong, New York and Singapore.

Carol Daley holds an MA in public and international affairs from the University of Ottawa and is currently completing graduate Law Studies at the University of Surrey (UK). Previously, she was a research assistant at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. She is interested in issues of voluntourism and the long term impact this form of travel has on local communities.

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