Collaborations in volunteer tourism

Abstract

Despite Volunteer Tourism (VT) being firmly rooted in sustainability, there is a lack of detailed understanding of how the VT supply chain influences sustainability. Specifically, while recent analytical frameworks evaluating relations in the VT supply chain have detected power imbalances amongst the main stakeholders, little is known about how and why the different active components of VT stakeholders’ relations influence sustainability. Based on a case study of the four main stakeholders in VT (sending and receiving organizations, volunteers, and host projects), this paper illustrates the nuanced details of how collaborative relations within the supply chain can lead to sustainability. The study determines how and why VT organizations’ values are the main drivers for the VT supply chain to achieve sustainability outcomes. It demonstrates how operationalising power-sharing and shared decision-making throughout the whole supply chain enables VT to improve sustainability performance. In the surveyed host projects, accumulative short-term outcomes (based on skills transfer and confidence building) can facilitate long-term transformative change such as social mobility.