Abstract

Previous research on dark tourism in vulnerable post-conflict areas, such as South-Eastern Europe, has overlooked the nature of visitor personalities. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to determine which personality traits (dark triad, sadistic impulse, and six personality traits) are related to preference for dark tourism sites. The sample consisted of 227 respondents from Serbia who completed an online questionnaire. Using a multivariate general linear model, it was found that respondents high in Machiavellianism tended to prefer dark exhibitions, while respondents high in psychopathy tended to prefer visiting conflict/battle sites. Visitors to fun factories as an additional type of dark tourism sites showed low levels of sadism, while narcissism showed no effect on preference for dark tourism sites. Hence, only agreeableness and honesty-humility showed a significant effect on preference for dark tourism sites (dark exhibitions and conflict/battle sites). These results show interesting differences in dark sites visitors’ personalities.

Highlights

  • Relationship between death, on the one hand, and tourism, on the other, is identified as a specific consumption form called dark tourism and this phenomenon has been researched for more than 20 years, starting with Rojek’s (1993) highlights of important term ‘black spot’

  • Based on the review of the available studies, this is the first research of the relationship between basic and dark personality traits and dark tourism site preference

  • We expected that all Dark Tetrad traits will be related to dark tourism site preference (H1)

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Summary

Introduction

Relationship between death, on the one hand, and tourism, on the other, is identified as a specific consumption form called dark tourism and this phenomenon has been researched for more than 20 years, starting with Rojek’s (1993) highlights of important term ‘black spot’ (pp. 137). In their initial research, Foley and Lennon (1996), as well as Seaton (1996) described the concept of dark tourism as travel encounters with death Besides defining it as a ‘dark’ one, other authors researched this type of tourism, labelling it as thanatourism (Christou & Hadjielia Drotarova, 2021; Jagiellonski, 2015; Lee et al, 2011; Lloyd-Parkes et al, 2021), fright tourism (Bristow, 2020; Bristow & Jenkins, 2020; Bristow & Newman, 2004), trauma tourism (Clark, 2006, 2009), grief tourism (Lewis, 2008; Sharpley & Stone, 2009), morbid tourism (Blom, 2000; da Silva, 2018) and death tourism (Biran et al, 2014). The intensity of darkness of such sites depends on the perception of victimization of death, while participants in dark tourism consider their visits to such sites as an act to show the respect to victims, but even to recall the pain of the ‘heroes’ of a particular hard moment, in order to make them ‘immortal’ in local or wider society (Osbaldiston & Petray, 2011)

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