Volunteer tourism is considered as an innovative form of sustainable community
development. The pure intention of voluntourists when participating in voluntourism
is believed to bring more benefits to the host community. However, whether local
people see a difference or have a preference for volunteer tourism is questionable.
Therefore, understanding local perceptions is necessary to evaluate the implementation
of voluntourism projects in the community. Moreover, I and my friend were involved
in several volunteer projects across our home country. The same personal interest in
this field has brought us together to implement this study.
Numerous practices and theories about residents' perceptions were examined in the
study including Doxey Irridex Model and Social Exchange Theory. Based on these
theories, we built a conceptual framework of residents' perceptions towards volunteer
tourism in their community. The use of framework is to guide the collection as well as
the analysis of the primary data.
The town which was chosen in the research was Sapa- a mountainous area in Vietnam.
Sapa has great potential of tourism development but the residents still suffer from
poverty and illiteracy. In order to carry out the research, 160 questionnaires were sent
to Sapa inhabitants between December 2011 and February 2012. 107 responses were
received in which 12 were uncompleted. The result then was analysed with SPSS
statistic software version 19.
The finding showed that the majority of respondents agreed with the positive impacts
of voluntourism in their community but there were two major notices in the survey.
The first one was about level of economic dependency and the second was the
residential characteristics. Furthermore, while respondents were supportive with
voluntourism activities, they were reluctant to participate in the planning process. In
order to achiveve the goal of sustainability development, local policy makers and tour
operators need to assure that the varied voices of the community should be taken care
of.