Leonie Lockstone-Binney

Volunteers and volunteering in leisure : social science perspectives

Leisure has been widely examined within the context of social science theory. This article adopts a broad approach, examining a range of social science disciplines and applying them to specific phenomena located within the leisure field, namely, volunteers and volunteering in leisure settings. In a disciplinary sense, the sociological view focuses upon the conceptualisation of volunteering as leisure, the psychological view seeks to understand motivations driving volunteering, while the perspective of economists supplements these standpoints in terms of why people volunteer and further examines the value of volunteer contributions. Comparative analysis of the perspectives enunciated within these key disciplines provides for a fuller picture of the status of research relating to leisure volunteers and volunteering. Accordingly, this article aims to identify gaps in current knowledge, draws out conclusions for an improved understanding of this area as well as to enhance comprehension of disciplinary contributions to the study of leisure phenomena.

Developing the dimensions of tourism volunteering.

Volunteers within tourism settings are of growing interest. Research to date has been fragmented either focusing on individuals volunteering in their community (i.e., hosts) or tourists volunteering at a destination (i.e., guests). In this paper, the tourism and leisure literature on volunteering is synthesized and the host and guest streams of volunteering critiqued according to four defining dimensions: setting, time commitment, level of obligation, and remuneration. These dimensions are refined using interview data to propose a model of tourism volunteering where host and guest volunteering are related rather than distinct. A simple host-guest dichotomy misses the shared and distinct complexities of tourism volunteering.

Constraints to Park Visitation: A Meta-Analysis of North American Studies

The constraints that curb visitation to parks have received considerable research attention and remain an important issue. Constraints to outdoor leisure in parks include structural barriers, such as cost of entry, interpersonal barriers, for example, lack of a partner to visit with, or intrapersonal barriers, including lack of interest. Using a meta-analysis approach, this article integrates the findings of 22 North American studies with 541 estimates, conducted over a 30-year period, to determine the key constraints to park visitation based on various socio-demographic factors. The findings highlight the varying roles that constraints play in limiting the visitation of people according to race, age, gender, education and income. Gaps in the literature are identified, with implications for encouraging visitation for more constrained groups discussed. An agenda for future research is presented.

Development of a Whole Agency Approach to Market Segmentation in Parks

Abstract Park agencies must plan to accommodate a diversity of visitors in order to satisfy visitor expectations and encourage future visitation. This study applies a market segmentation approach to develop a visitor typology that is effective across a broad spectrum of parks and applicable to a range of priorities, both strategic and operational, within park management agencies. Over a four-year period, data was sourced from over 11,000 interviews conducted at 33 diverse Australian national and metropolitan parks managed by the agency Parks Victoria. Factor analysis and cluster analysis was used to identify seven distinct visitor segments on the basis of numerous variables including, crucially, benefits sought. The applied and theoretical contributions of this study to the parks literature are discussed.

The Future of Volunteer Tourism in the Asia-Pacific Region Alternative Prospects

Volunteer tourism has attracted increasing attention among tourism industry practitioners and researchers. As an indication of the scale and scope of the phenomenon, most volunteer tourists have been residents of developed countries visiting developing countries to participate in community development initiatives, scientific research and ecological restoration projects. The researchers have reviewed the literature to determine the drivers of growth that have shaped volunteer tourism and have examined the trends affecting tourism and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region over the medium to longer term. These exploratory inputs serve to inform three scenarios about the likely shape of volunteer tourism within the region leading to 2050: the first scenario predicts a steady state, the second growing participation, and the final proposition, one of diminishing viability. The prospective implications for volunteer tourism arising from these various scenarios are discussed, together with a concluding agenda for future research.

An examination of not-for-profit volunteer tourism sending organisations' guiding considerations that influence volunteer tourism programmes

This exploratory study examines the guiding considerations which not-for-profit volunteer tourism sending organisations utilise in designing and implementing volunteer tourism programmes. These considerations encompass overarching factors which affect the strategic and operational direction which those sending organisations take, influencing their choice of activities and providing the framework for their programmes. The study explores the vision and mission statements of not-for-profit sending organisations along with their programme principles so as to reveal the guiding considerations which underpin the implementation of volunteer tourism programmes. Eleven guiding considerations were determined, with the five most frequently occurring listed in rank order as: Interaction, Needs of Host Community, Participant-Focused Benefits, Host Community–Focused Participation and Quality of Life. The fact that three guiding considerations focused heavily on the impact on, and needs and involvement of, the host community, is a promising indication that not-for-profit sending organisations place strong emphasis on a host-community-led strategy that keeps their programmes relevant to key beneficiaries. The needs of the participants are not neglected, however, with participant-focused benefits, such as the learning and adventure components of trips, being a prominent guiding consideration to emerge from the analysis. Lastly, bringing mutual benefits and positive interaction between host communities and volunteer tourists is also a key focus of these organisations. This research contributes to the limited literature on volunteer tourism sending organisations and offers an initial insight into the motivations and criteria that mould programmes from the perspective of these organisations.

Virtuous volunteer tourism: Towards a uniform code of conduct

Abstract The expanding body of research on volunteer tourism has generally assessed the merits of these programmes in positive terms, although it has also identified some negative impacts on host communities. In this paper it is proposed that a set of industry-wide guidelines could inform the largely unregulated volunteer tourism market and help it to achieve the right balance between encouraging positive impacts and minimizing negative side effects. A qualitative analysis was conducted of the guiding principles for 12 not-for-profit sending organizations with a view to identifying emergent themes. Ranked from most to least frequent, the themes emanating from the data were: local needs; participant-focused; consideration towards continuity; community; issues; interaction; and organizational goals. The seven themes were then compared with the international standards that have been developed to guide the parent fields of volunteerism and tourism. It was found that six recurring themes could be readily matched against four categories of the Universal Declaration of Volunteering, and against six of the United Nations World Tourism Organizations Global Code of Ethics for Tourism. The findings suggest that the principles applied by sending organizations to their volunteer tourism programmes generally align with the best practice standards prevailing in the broader volunteering and tourism sectors. The paper concludes by proposing an agenda for future research relating to global guidelines for volunteer tourism.

Is this for real? Authentic learning for the challenging events environment.

This article explores a set of emerging competencies that education providers will be increasingly compelled to consider and, more importantly, embed in their event management course offerings. The undergraduate event management program offered at Victoria University, Melbourne, provides a case study of the efforts of teaching staff to iteratively and reflectively integrate these emerging competencies into course curriculum, many of which will be required for graduates to successfully transition to work in their career sector of choice—the events industry. The competencies of sustainable development, creativity and innovation, and networking are all seen as vital to graduate outcomes and employability. The fundamental responses to this process are discussed and lead to a distillation of the implications for teaching practice associated with embedding emerging competencies in event management education.

What about the workers? Roles and skills for employees in hotels of the future:

Hotels are diverse and constantly evolving, changing over time, inter alia, in their shape and appearance, their size, purpose, location and, perhaps above all, their representation of luxury and comfort. These changes have been and, intuitively, will continue to be driven by a complex amalgam of drivers. Representations that depict hotels of the future accommodate the consequences of change in varying ways – design, service, interaction with systems and technology among other considerations. This article is concerned less with the consumer and the physical properties of the establishment but rather seeks to focus consideration primarily on the possible changing roles of service workers within various conceptions of what hotels in the future may look like through to 2030 and beyond. The article applies a qualitative approach involving a literature review and subsequent Delphi method to develop and examine in depth three key drivers affecting the roles and skills of employees in hotels of the future. The attendant alternative workforce implications of each are discussed in turn.

Exploring the conceptual boundaries of diaspora and battlefield tourism: Australians' travel to the Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, as a case study

Historical tourism resources associated with diasporic communities and battlefields would at face value appear to have little in common. On closer inspection, however, diaspora and battlefield tourism share several elements in common. These commonalities are explored in greater detail, with an eye to investigating battlefield tourism sites indelibly linked to the birth of modern nations, where it is argued that there is a particularly blurred boundary between these two forms of tourism that must be recognized. The Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, provides the contextual anchor for this discussion in suggesting that a key reason Australians travel to this foreign place to is to find out what it means to be an Australian. The prominence of this battlefield in the psyche of Australians is borne out of the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) in the First World War campaign that commenced at what is now known as Anzac Cove at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. This campaign was the first united action of the fledging Australian nation bought together through federation in 1901. Qualitative data collected from Australians visiting the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey during 2010 is used to explore whether the experiences of those traveling to battlefields strongly associated with nation building legends and stories resemble those of diasporic tourists in seeking to return to their homeland. Emerging from the analysis, the confines of the blurred boundary between diaspora tourism and battlefield tourism is discussed in detail and an associated research agenda is proposed that aims to further clarify the scope of these concepts in relation to the broad spectrum of heritage tourism resources