‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector

Tourism organizations are dependent on volunteers to deliver visitor services. Evidence suggests that volunteering is changing with a decline in volunteer hours per head and a rise in episodic forms of volunteering. This paper uses data from interviews with both regular and episodic volunteers in to...

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Main Author: Holmes, Kirsten
Format: Journal Article
Published: Routledge 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41519
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author Holmes, Kirsten
author_facet Holmes, Kirsten
author_sort Holmes, Kirsten
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Tourism organizations are dependent on volunteers to deliver visitor services. Evidence suggests that volunteering is changing with a decline in volunteer hours per head and a rise in episodic forms of volunteering. This paper uses data from interviews with both regular and episodic volunteers in tourism-related roles to examine how volunteering fits within their working and leisure lives and how and why they make time for volunteering. The findings reveal that episodic volunteers are still passionate about the activity, but have different motives from regular volunteers who are seeking an ongoing activity with social benefits. Episodic volunteers often make a bigger time commitment in the short term and these intense roles would be difficult to sustain regularly. However, the interviews also identify that episodic volunteers are regular volunteers at other organizations and vice versa. This paper concludes by calling for a portfolio approach to researching volunteers.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-415192017-09-13T14:09:29Z ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector Holmes, Kirsten Tourism organizations are dependent on volunteers to deliver visitor services. Evidence suggests that volunteering is changing with a decline in volunteer hours per head and a rise in episodic forms of volunteering. This paper uses data from interviews with both regular and episodic volunteers in tourism-related roles to examine how volunteering fits within their working and leisure lives and how and why they make time for volunteering. The findings reveal that episodic volunteers are still passionate about the activity, but have different motives from regular volunteers who are seeking an ongoing activity with social benefits. Episodic volunteers often make a bigger time commitment in the short term and these intense roles would be difficult to sustain regularly. However, the interviews also identify that episodic volunteers are regular volunteers at other organizations and vice versa. This paper concludes by calling for a portfolio approach to researching volunteers. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41519 10.1080/11745398.2014.965183 Routledge fulltext
spellingShingle Holmes, Kirsten
‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title_full ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title_fullStr ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title_full_unstemmed ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title_short ‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
title_sort ‘it fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41519