Digital voluntourism and sense of place: volunteers’ responsibility towards an ‘imaginary locality’

Digital volunteer tourism (DVT) has emerged as a viable alternative to positively impact destinations when travel is impossible during times of crisis. This leaves volunteers, the ‘agents’ in volunteer projects and development work, who might often identify with a destination or specific cause, without a tangible link to the locality. Raising the important question of what role being physically connected to the locality plays in voluntourism; this study focuses on volunteers’ perception of their own impact in an out-of-reach destination. Through online fieldwork during an eight-week internship with a volunteer organisation in Fiji, this paper offers first insights into the phenomenon of digital voluntourism by discussing the role that a link to the destination and a sense of place play in still feeling to be making a difference. Furthermore, this debate reveals whether and how DVT intends to stimulate a sense of belonging of those volunteers to foster their sense of responsibility, while juxtaposing these digital programmes to in-situ voluntourism. This paper, therefore, constitutes one of the first contributions conceptualising the geography of digital voluntourism, arguing that while DVT has its merits in contributing to the sustainable development agenda, the physical distance and isolation from the place where this impact should be felt compromise their feelings of achievement and understanding of the locality even more than in usual voluntourism projects.