The Importance of Tourism Motivations Among Sport Event Volunteers at the 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract

The main aim of this research is to explore the importance of tourism within the motivation of volunteers, focusing on a case study of the 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. Volunteers have mostly been ignored as a subject of research in almost all fields and there is a need for a deeper understanding of the diverse nature of sport event volunteer tourism. The study on 225 volunteers at the Championships investigated a range of 50 motivations framed by Pearce's (2005 Pearce, P. L. 2005. Tourist behaviour, themes and conceptual schemes, Clevedon: Channel View Publication. [Google Scholar]) Travel Career Pattern, as well as Snyder's (1993 Snyder, M. 1993. Basic research and practical problems: the promise of a ‘functional’ personality and social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19(3): 251–264. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Volunteer Function Inventory, Farell et al.'s (1998) volunteer classification and Stebbins' (1992) work on serious and project-based leisure. Overall, the results indicated volunteer-based motivations that are generally more important than the tourism-based considerations. The age and gender of the volunteers had an influence on more of the volunteer-based motives compared with tourism. A considerable proportion of volunteers perceived themselves to be a tourist, and there was a desire to further take part in tourism activities, in addition to their volunteering duties, while at the event. Destination managers and volunteer event co-ordinators should be aware that the link to tourism may strategically help to increase commitment and experience satisfaction levels among the volunteers, who are less obvious and thus a potential tourism market.

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