sustainable tourism (France, 1997; Hall & Lew

Abstract Concern for the degradation of the environment (Holden, 2000; Russo, 1999) has seen the emergence of a small but steadily increasing number of UK organisations, which are primarily situated in the third sector (Office of the Third Sector, 2008). These are increasingly cited (Benson, 2004; Clifton & Benson, 2006; Coghlan, 2006) in the emerging and growing niche of volunteer tourism (Wearing, 2001). The organisations bring paying volunteers (tourists) and scientists together to work on research projects, and offer similar services but the range of specific research projects available to volunteers is both complex and diverse. This allows the organisations to differentiate their portfolio based around the projects' destinations (the locations are often remote), the type of ecosystem involved (e.g. marine, terrestrial, rainforest) and the actual activity or purpose around which the project is based (e.g. diving coral reefs, or related to wildlife). Despite this diversity, the organisations all operate in essentially a common framework of sustainability, that involve notions of sustainable development (Holden, 2000; IUCN, 1980; Murphy, 1994; World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), sustainable tourism (France, 1997; Hall & Lew, 1998; Holden, 2000; UNWTO, 2004) and the triple bottom line (Rogers & Ryan, 2001; Vanclay, 2004; Willard, 2002). The framework of sustainability is built on three pillars: economic, environmental and social. The literature clearly indicates that a balance between the three pillars is essential if sustainability is to be achieved (Burns & Holden, 1995; Clarke, 1997; Cronin, 1990; Hardy, Beeton, & Pearson, 2002; Ko, 2005; Swarbrooke, 1999; United Nationals Development Programme, 2005). In order for this balance to be achieved and therefore, sustainable tourism development to be successful a range of stakeholders (Freeman, 1984; Friedman & Miles, 2002; Phillips & Freeman, 2003) (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002). Consequently, the aim of this research was to explore the complexity of trying to work within a framework of sustainability, with a given number of stakeholders (in this case, a UK organisation, its customers (volunteers, primarily British) and the local community (Indonesian) where the project operates) that may hold different values and the extent t