Volunteer Tourism Development: Perceptions from University Students in Thailand
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Abstract
Volunteer tourism is an alternative tourism aiming to support local destination in order to perform responsible tourism development. Thailand is one of the most famous destinations for volunteer tourism destination. This paper provides background of volunteer tourism in Thailand using university students, as main target, to explore their perceptions, attitudes, and motivations of involvement. Data collection was implemented through questionnaire survey and in-depth interview. This is to understand perceptions and motivation of involvement from university students, as main target population. Findings show that university students understand that volunteer tourism is a traveling for conducting volunteer works at host destination but they rarely involved in such programs due to limited information, time availability, and preferring of different type of tourism which providing more attractive activities for them. Perceptions and motivations of university students found from this study, therefore, will contribute as important information for future volunteer tourism development which will meet the needs of target people.
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