Tourism and Altruistic Intention: Volunteer Tourism Development and Self-Interested Value

Abstract

Volunteer tourism is indisputably an emerging trend in the tourism industry across the globe. Yet, little is known about the altruistic behavior of volunteer travelers. To fill this void, this research explores the convoluted relationships among memorable experience, awareness of problem, social norm, psychological resilience, personal norm, and self-interested value in driving altruistic intention. A field survey was conducted with a quantitative approach. The result reveals that psychological resilience and personal norm are direct determinants of altruistic intention while mediating the influence of awareness of problem and social norm on intention. In addition, memorable experience along with awareness of problem significantly induced volunteer travelers' psychological resilience. Moreover, the test for metric invariance shows that the relationships between psychological resilience, personal norm, and altruistic intention are under the significant influence of volunteer travelers' self-interested value. Overall, the variance in altruistic intention for volunteer tourism is satisfactorily explained by our suggested theoretical framework.