Toward a Demand Profile of WWOOFers in Portugal: Ecological, Rural, and Voluntary Principles in Tourism

Abstract

Environmental crisis worldwide was the critical driver to Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farm (WWOOF) tourists. These tourists, like many others, decide their holiday experiences based on preferences, time, and money constraints. With the increase in the perception of ecological crises, new concerns have arisen in tourism practices. This chapter aims to characterize the WWOOFers tourists by elaborating a typology from a sociological and economic perspective. These tourists’ profiles were obtained through the analysis of reviews submitted on the WWOOF website. This website offers cultural experiences based on trust and nonmonetary exchange. The reviews function as a kind of application prior to the experiences, which include dimensions such as age group, class, education, level of commitment to the project, length of stay, activities developed, and perceptions about the experience. The investigation focused on two main phases. On the one hand, to establish some sociodemographic characteristics of these tourists through quantitative analysis and on the other hand, it identifies possible profiles through qualitative content analysis. The results corroborate the trends identified in other studies and advance with three exploratory profiles: sustainable gappers, sustainable escapers, and sustainable lifers.