Volunteer Tourism: Reflections from Applied Ethics

Abstract

This article aims to use the applied ethics perspective to reflect on the ethical complexities that may appear in the context of volunteer tourism. In this tourist typology, volunteers come into contact with the local culture by establishing a dialogue between their motivations (diverse and not always markedly altruistic) and the morals and needs of the host community. In this dialogue, difficulties arise that may put these volunteer projects at risk since interactions between people with different values and morals can generate distrust, frustration, and even open conflicts between the host community and visitors. In this context, this article exposes and applies ethics concepts to specific cases and reaffirms the need to train volunteers before their trips to encourage critical self-reflection on their behaviour when they are in societies with a different system of morality.