Volunteer tourism as a transformative journey - “ It's something that they still have, that many have lost at home”

Abstract: Volunteer tourism is an alternative form of tourism that is constantly increasing. The increase can be considered related to trends about social participation, environmental awareness and moral demands. Volunteering in developing countries has previously been associated with altruism and social responsibility, but more recently volunteer organizations have used personal development as part of their marketing. This, together with scant research on identity change in the context of voluntourism, has led us to question what happens to volunteers' self-identity during their volunteer experience. With the concepts of existential authenticity, epiphanic experiences and the Other, we examine the desire to volunteer and also how encounters with the Other in an unknown environment generates transformative epiphanies and changes in self-identity. In our study, we find that the desire to engage in volunteer tourism cannot solely be explained by existential authenticity, but also by "moral grandstanding", which distinguishes volunteer tourism from other forms of tourism. Inauthenticity creates a longing for the existential authentic self and moral grandstanding is based on the desire for others to be impressed by the individual's supposed high moral qualities. The encounter with the Other in an unknown environment that exists beyond everyday life, can generate transformations, questioning pre-understanding and values, as well as generate insight conceptualized as epiphany. We conclude that interaction with the Other in an unknown environment generates a high cultural, ethical and historical exchange which forms the basis of the epiphanic experience that changes the perceived self-identity. We find that self-identity can be created in relation to the Other in at least two ways. Tourists' self-identity can be created through the exotic image of the Other, which makes tourists strive to identify with the idealized Other and their desirable way of life. The self-identity can also be created based on the hostile image of the Other, which entails that the identity is maintained and established by distancing the self from the Other.