Motives for young people to volunteer abroad A case study of AIESEC interns from the perspective of volunteer tourism
This study focuses on volunteering in the context of tourism and its main objective is to reveal the motives of students and recent graduates in voluntary projects. Qualitative research methods were used to get deeper insight and better understanding of the studied topic. This research evaluated data from semi structured and unstructured interviews with ongoing and former interns of Global Citizen internship mediated by the AIESEC organization (students' non profit organization) The analytical software Atlas.ti was utilized to analyse and process gained data when content analysis and open coding were applied. Results of the research show five noteworthy volunteers' motivations: travelling and leisure, experiencing new culture and people, acquiring advantage at the labour market, gaining experience from abroad, and altruism. Mentioned motivations encompass thirteen single motives. Significant prevalence of the volunteers' self motivation over their altruistic motives was revealed. The findings of this study provide insight into volunteers' motives and a deeper understanding of volunteer tourism. Provided information can be useful for both sending and receiving/hosting organizations in terms of aiming on and selecting appropriate volunteers.