Programme monitoring and evaluation in volunteer tourism: towards a critical approach

The practices of volunteer tourism organisations and volunteer tourists are coming under increasing scrutiny due to concerns about the rapid expansion and commercialisation of the sector. As a result, the monitoring and evaluation of volunteer tourism programmes is deemed important to ensure that programmes remain relevant to both host communities and volunteer tourists. However, as the literature on volunteer tourism demonstrates, the landscape of volunteer tourism has become increasingly complex and ambiguous. Drawing from the fields of evaluation studies and critical management studies as well as an extensive review of the volunteer tourism literature and practical insights derived from ‘grey literature’, this paper considers the implications of this complex landscape for the monitoring and evaluation of volunteer tourism programmes. Building upon these insights, we present a critical approach for examining the monitoring and evaluation of volunteer tourism programmes