Abstract
Evolutionary psychology offers new potential to understand the motivation of tourists visiting dark sites. This study first identified four fundamental motives (kincare, exploration, affiliation, and status) related to dark tourism contexts, and then examined their relationships with proximal motives and disaster perception. Results found that fundamental motives positively affected corresponding proximate motives and mediated the relationships between disaster perception and proximate motives, and gender and prior experience had moderating effects. This study contributes to better understanding the fundamental psychological mechanisms of tourists visiting dark sites and has some practical implications for these sites’ marketing and management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 610-624 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 25 Sept 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant “Research on the psychological mechanism of tourists in dark tourism from the perspective of evolution” [No. 72302157].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Asia Pacific Tourism Association.
Keywords
- Dark tourism site
- tourist
- evolutionary psychology
- fundamental motives
- proximal motives
- disaster perception
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management