A Broaden-and-Build Theoretical Perspective on Dark Tourism Visitors’ Transformative Emotional Journeys

Abstract

Emotions are at the epicenter of dark tourism, where visitors are confronted with topics relating to death and suffering and experience heightened emotional responses. Using the Broaden-and-Build model as a theoretical lens, we aim to examine the process through which visitors’ unpleasant emotions can transform into positive ones at a dark tourism site. The findings from interviews and photo-elicitation with visitors at the Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois, indicate that emotions in dark tourism are momentary experiences with enduring effects, contributing to building personal resources for future activism and well-being. The study expands the Broaden-and-Build model by incorporating negative emotions into the positive upward spiral of broadened thoughts and actions, building enduring personal resources and long-lasting well-being from dark tourism visitors’ emotional journeys.