Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

takes employment opportunities away from highly-unemployed and impoverished communities. If the
international community claims to be focused on sustainable development, then relying on foreign
voluntourists to teach, build, and heal is counter-productive.
Supporters of vountourism argue that the goal is to stimulate local economy and provide financial
support for host community needs. Traditional tourism injects money and jobs into a local community:
tourists come with an appetite for local trinkets, sight-seeing, and cuisine. Voluntourism does the same,
with an added condition that the voluntourists are provided volunteer opportunities. Industry supporters
hail this volunteer work as a method to increase cross-cultural interaction, teaching both the voluntourist
and the host community about people from completely foreign societies. For voluntourism’s critics, the
effectiveness this intercultural education is still to be determined.
Integrating volunteer work with traditional tourism provides much room for ethical debate. While
many recognize tourism’s objective to be fulfilling the needs of the consumer-tourist, volunteer work also
receives critique concerning its’ goals: is volunteering truly altruistic, or is it driven by more selfish factors?
Some argue that volunteer work cannot truly be considered altruistic when the volunteer gains selffulfillment,
self-esteem, and happiness, as discussed by Haidt (2006). The implications of categorizing
volunteering as self-serving can pose several questions. If volunteering is not conducted with completely
altruistic motives, is the value of the volunteer work lessened? And, the less obvious, is it wrong to
volunteer to satisfy one’s own needs? Alexander, Bakir, and Wickens (2010) pointed out that a volunteer’s
draw to these self-oriented benefits can be explained by human effort to satisfy Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs. In the developed world, the majority of individuals easily meet their physiological needs and safety.
These two basic levels are followed by four psychological levels: love and belonging, esteem, selfactualization,
and self-transcendence. Volunteers are often looking to satisfy these latter levels of needs.
398