Dark Attraction Sites: Understanding Motivations, Intentions, and Behaviors of Tourists

Abstract

Dark Tourism is a newly recognized niche tourism type that is first coined in 1996 by Lennon and Foley. This new term has attracted academicians and researchers globally. Till mid of 20th century, major work on dark tourism was limited to understanding its concept and giving it various names such as death tourism, black tourism, horror tourism, thanatourism, morbid tourism, and many more. After the mid-20th century, the focus of researchers was shifted to tourists’ psychology specifically on tourists’ motivation. Researchers suggested various motivational factors such as ‘curiosity of unusual,’ ‘education and learning,’ ‘historic interest,’ ‘inner purification,’ and ‘interested in death-related sites’ that influence tourists to seek dark attraction places. Recent research identified impact of dark places on visitors’ emotions and experiences. Some has argued that after visit tourists’ experience negative emotions such as depression or horror. While some suggested that dark tourism have positive emotion experience. This chapter is based on a secondary database, descriptive in nature, and aims to depict the motivation, purposes, and behavior of tourists toward dark attraction places that are linked to places of dark history.

Citation

Modi, N. and Sodani, P. (2024), "Dark Attraction Sites: Understanding Motivations, Intentions, and Behaviors of Tourists", Sharma, A., Arora, S. and Shukla, P. (Ed.) Dark Tourism (Building the Future of Tourism), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 61-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-336-120241005