This global study examined 106,979 tweets posted by 34,370 unique users from 2010 to 2019 to understand the sentiment of those indirectly involved in orphanage tourism and its change over time.
The result from this study indicated that despite recent critiques of orphanage tourism, the conversations on orphanage volunteering were still largely positive. The persistence of positive sentiment toward orphanage tourism was due to fleeting critiques, the low rate of new critics joining the discourse, and the limited engagement of the existing users. The findings implied that there is a need for further anti-orphanage tourism campaigns and active recruitment of orphanage tourism critiques.
The current study contributed to the limited literature on orphanage tourism by utilizing social media to extract valuable information about the perceptions of not only those directly involved stakeholders but also those indirectly involved.
