Volunteering in events, sports and tourism
Volunteering is an essential component of the events, sports and tourism (EST) sectors. Volunteers underpin a range of core EST services that contribute to the liveability and vibrancy of destinations for visitors and residents alike. From running local sporting clubs, to directing visitors at local information centres, to planning community events and delivering development projects abroad, the multitude of contributions of EST volunteers cannot be ignored.
Volunteering can be defined in many ways – as unpaid work, civil society or serious leisure (Rochester et al., 2010). The dominant understanding of what constitutes volunteering varies across different countries, with the unpaid work perspective taking precedence in Anglo-Saxon countries, while volunteering as civil action is the leading view in Nordic countries. While there is no accepted definition, there is general agreement among researchers that volunteering is a multi-dimensional concept, and the most frequently cited definition comes from Cnaan, Handy and Wadsworth (1996, p. 371). Cnaan et al. present four elements of volunteering, which form the basis of a definition, each dimension presented on a continuum:
- free choice (free will, relatively uncoerced, obligation to volunteer);
- remuneration (none at all, none expected, expenses reimbursed, stipend/low pay);
- structure (formal, informal); and
- intended beneficiaries (benefit/help others, usually strangers; benefit/help friends or relatives; benefit oneself, as well).
These dimensions mean that different forms of volunteering sit on a spectrum ranging from pure to broad. This gives rise to many ‘grey’ areas where it is not clear whether an activity is understood to be volunteering by the participant or the beneficiaries. Research has shown that some forms of volunteering are perceived by society more widely as more volunteer-like than others (Haski-Leventhal et al., 2018). This perception is based on the cost of volunteering to the participant; the more it costs the participant in terms of time and resources, the more volunteer-like the activity is perceived to be. This means that most of the activities undertaken by volunteers in the EST sectors in supporting the leisure activities of beneficiaries, could also be classified as a form of leisure for the volunteer and, as such, may be perceived as less serious compared to volunteering efforts that support essential services such as health provision and emergency response.
The contribution of EST volunteers is difficult to quantify. In respect of events, volunteers are involved in a wide range from local community events and festivals to mega-events, the latter being one about which there has been a lot written (Smith et al., 2014). They are also involved in most sports, particularly at grassroots level. Indeed, in some Western Anglo countries, sport volunteering makes up nearly a third of all formal volunteering (ABS, 2019). Volunteering within tourism takes place in two distinct settings: host volunteers and guest volunteers (Holmes et al., 2010). Host volunteers are involved in a range of services for tourists. These include various roles at attractions, meet-and-greet programmes, visitor information centres, tour guiding and emergency services. Guest volunteers are primarily volunteer tourists. Volunteer tourism as a phenomenon was first described in detail by Wearing (2001) and has now developed into a substantial sub-field, as Chapter 35 of this handbook demonstrates. Paradoxically, some volunteers provide visitor services at some distance from their home, combining both host and guest roles. An example would be campground hosts, who operate national park campsites (Weiler & Caldicott, 2020), see Chapter 7.
Research on volunteering in EST has grown substantially in recent years. Some aspects such as mega-event volunteer programmes and volunteer tourism have received substantial attention from researchers, whereas others, including destination service volunteering (Chapter 7), and fundraising and business events (Chapters 16 and 18 respectively), have been largely overlooked. Most research on EST volunteering is also very siloed. Papers on mega-event volunteer programmes are published in events and occasionally tourism journals, sports volunteer researchers publish in sports journals whereas, volunteer tourism studies are published in tourism journals. There are few studies that examine issues across different sectors. Research has predominantly examined formal volunteering in the EST sectors, whereby individuals volunteer through an organisation. In contrast, informal volunteering, where individuals help within their neighbourhood, has received little attention to the point where we know very little about this (see Chapter 37).
In addition, there is a significant gap between the EST body of research on volunteering and more generalist studies from the not-for-profit sector. There is much that EST researchers could learn from these generalist studies, rather than the predisposition to look inwards and describe volunteering only in narrow reference to EST volunteering studies. This predisposition in part explains the ongoing drive to develop specialist EST volunteering instruments (as noted in Chapters 5 and 40), when generalist measures such as the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) (Clary et al., 1998) are widely applicable and reliable, as Chapter 21 demonstrates. It is notable that there is a body of work on volunteer tourism within tourism studies and a separate body of work on international volunteering within the not-for-profit literature. Both approach the phenomena differently, with tourism researchers seeing volunteer tourists as tourists who volunteer, and not-for-profit researchers perceiving them as volunteers who travel internationally. Both approaches also favour different methodologies, with a predominance of qualitative case study work on volunteer tourism and a preference for large-scale macro studies on international volunteering.
This handbook is timely in bringing these various forms of volunteering within EST together. The chapters highlight similarities and differences, which enable a more macro perspective on the challenges facing the future of EST volunteering and volunteer-involving organisations. In addition, we have included chapters from leading researchers working in the generalist not-for-profit space (including Haddock, Chapter 2; Meijs, Chapter 20; Rochester, Chapter 36; Wang, Chapter 37; chapter co-authors Handy and Kang, Chapter 14; Hustinx, Chapter 15; and Stukas, Chapter 21). These chapters draw on the wider body of literature on volunteering and will enable broader cross-fertilisation. If we are to advance our knowledge of EST volunteering – and volunteering more generally – such interdisciplinary perspectives are essential. One challenge that emerges from different forms of EST volunteering is how to leverage short-term and episodic volunteering into both bounce-back and longer-term commitments. This is a challenge for both event legacy planning and volunteer tourism providers. Sharing and comparing experiences and approaches to harnessing recognised volunteer energy for future volunteer assignments would be highly beneficial for the sustainability of both local and international forms of EST volunteering.
Structure of handbook
The handbook is divided into seven parts, which we outline below.
Part 1 – Disciplinary approaches to volunteering
The study of volunteerism is multi-disciplinary, and Part 1 sets the foundation for the handbook by reviewing how different disciplines have examined EST volunteering. The different disciplinary approaches are presented in alphabetical order, beginning with economic approaches. Economists view volunteering as unpaid work and are primarily concerned with measuring volunteering and establishing its value. In Chapter 2, Haddock discusses the challenges involved and merits in arriving at an internationally accepted definition of volunteering work. This definitional clarity allows for volunteering efforts to be measured alongside the range of economic data collected by international statistical bodies, with the potential to bring the economic contributions of volunteers to the fore. Furthering this recognition, Haddock moves on to explore the potential of relating EST volunteering to international standard statistical classifications of occupations, industries, goods and services and sector-relevant satellite accounts. Haddock concludes by discussing various methods for calculating the economic value of volunteering, dedicated studies of which are underutilised in respect of EST volunteering, with Solberg’s (2003) valuation of a cohort of major sporting event volunteers being a notable exception.
Drawing on a review of the international development scholarship, in Chapter 3 Davies argues that geography fundamentally affects the nature of volunteering as it promotes mobility of individuals, ideas, knowledge and resources between geographies. Davies argues that the geographic divide often associated with international and other (domestic) forms of volunteering should be avoided to prevent dichotomous framings of volunteer spaces, particularly in respect of international development as being a one-way movement of knowledge, resources, values and practices from the global North to the global South. The dominance of the global North perspective of volunteering in general, and in relation to EST volunteering specifically, is noted elsewhere in this handbook (see, for example, Chapter 39). In Chapter 4, Grimm, Wiehe and Bath-Rosenfeld critique conservation volunteer tourism through the lens of political ecology, proposing that the latter can help to assess the former. They introduce two models which examine power dimensions and contrasting access to opportunities, and highlight that these models can assist researchers and practitioners to examine and identify places of inequity that, if addressed, will help facilitate more ethical conservation volunteer tourism.
Chapter 5 explores the psychology of volunteering, with Kragt examining the application of psychological theories to understand the latent motivations for people becoming and remaining volunteers. In respect of the recruitment phase, Kragt discusses appeals based on the functional approach to volunteering of which the aforementioned VFI is the dominant instrument for assessing the psychological functions volunteers seek to have met through volunteering (Clary et al., 1998). Adaptions of the VFI contextualised to EST volunteering are outlined. Kragt explores, amongst other theories, the importance of the psychological contract for understanding how volunteers’ expectations can be fulfilled to ensure their ongoing retention. Finally, psychological understandings of demographic and individual factors affecting volunteering are discussed. Kragt argues this is an important area where the lack of EST specific studies should be addressed to better understand the role of such factors in volunteer recruitment and retention. We acknowledge some confirmatory overlap between Kragt’s chapter and Chapter 21 on volunteering motivation by Petrovic and Stukas.
The final disciplinary lens covered in this part is public administration. In Chapter 6, Gawlowski and Gulak-Lipka provide a case study of the dynamics of local public administration working in respect of an international sporting event (the UEFA Under 21 Championship hosted by Poland in 2017). They highlight that two different management paradigms were at play. UEFA, as the international sporting organisation that owned the event, demonstrated top-down New Public Management (NPM) (Nesbit, Christensen & Brudney, 2017), keeping tight control over a number of decisions as to how the local volunteer workforce in the city of Bydgoszcz were recruited and managed. In contrast, the local public administration demonstrated network governance aimed at building cooperation with UEFA and other hos...
