Dark Sites Research Articles

Transformative journey experiences to heritage sites: a dark tourism spectrum

ABSTRACT Dark heritage sites can evolve from being merely sites of tragedy to places that offer transformative experiences for travelers. This qualitative study explores travelers’ transformative experiences of Christian pilgrimages after an 8-day Holy Land tour and of Jewish travelers after a 7-day Holocaust sites tour in Poland. Both tours represent different points on the dark tourism spectrum. We explored experiences tapping four domains in which travelers ascribe place meaning to these dark places: personal, spiritual, communal, and global (i.e. broad humanity). The travelers’ experiences in these four domains are mapped onto a matrix of cognitive vs. emotional and self-centered vs. other-centered experiences. In addition, place meaning in each of the four domains was found to be reflected differently in each of the transformation stages in the two examined journeys on the dark tourism spectrum. Each domain triggered different transformational processes in both of these journeys. Tourism planners are encouraged to design transformative journeys to dark heritage sites in light of the dynamics of the four place-meaning domains.

Analysis of Tourist Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites in Kinmen: Clustering Analysis of Motivations, Emotional Responses, and Satisfaction

Dark tourism involves visiting sites associated with death, disaster, and major historical tragedies. Kinmen, Taiwan, known for its history of multiple wars, features notable dark tourism sites such as Mount Taiwu, the Guningtou War Museum, and the 823 Memorial Hall. These sites currently offer educational significance about historical events, but visiting them often triggers complex emotional responses. This study explores tourist experiences at these sites, focusing on motivations, emotional reactions, and the relationship between satisfaction and psychological stress. The study surveyed 348 visitors and used clustering analysis to group their travel experiences. The results identified three types of visitors: History Enthusiasts, War Memorialists, and Exploratory Curiosity Seekers, each with distinct motivations and emotional responses. Emotions experienced include sadness, shock, fear, and unease, closely related to the content and atmosphere of the sites. While overall satisfaction is high, many visitors report being "satisfied but not happy." The study suggests targeted strategies to enhance dark tourism experiences, such as providing emotional support, emphasizing commemorative value, and offering ethical education. Recommendations for site management include addressing emotional needs and balancing educational significance with emotional impact.

Co-Innovation in Dark Tourism: Quality and Type of Tourists’ Ideas Before vs. After the Visit

Building on prior findings on co-innovation and dark tourism, this research examined if and how the experiential stage (before vs. after the visit) affects the quality and the type of ideas provided by tourists. Four hundred visitors shared new ideas for a dark tourism experience, in Medellin (Colombia). Half of the sample was interviewed before visiting the site and the other half after the visit. The results show that before the visit (i.e. less information: higher cognitive flexibility and lower functional fixedness) the respondents provided more original ideas. After the visit, their ideas were rated higher in terms of feasibility and persuasiveness. Furthermore, tourists showed higher morbid curiosity before the visit, leading to morbid ideas. After the visit, curiosity about history and empathy increased, leading to educational ideas. The results can help managers to set goals for co-innovation at dark tourism sites, by considering the different experiential stages.

Exploring Tourist Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites in Taiwan: Motivations, Emotional Responses, and Satisfaction Analysis

Exploring Tourist Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites in Taiwan: Motivations, Emotional Responses, and Satisfaction Analysis

Can negative dark tourism transformative experiences promote tourists’ well-being?

Drawing on identity development theory, this study examines the relationships between negative dark tourism transformative experiences (NDTTEs), self-reflection, self-rumination, self-discovery, and well-being to corroborate a model explaining how NDTTEs contribute to tourists’ well-being. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 684 tourists who had visited dark tourism sites over the past three years. Two constructs representing NDTTEs were identified (anger and disgust, pain and sadness), and the results indicated that NDTTEs were predictors of self-reflection and self-rumination. Unexpectedly, self-reflection negatively affected self-rumination. Self-reflection and self-rumination were determinants of self-discovery, which subsequently affected well-being. This study offers a new theoretical lens for understanding the role of dark tourism in promoting tourists’ well-being.

The paradox of attraction: unveiling the dynamics of tourist motivation and impact perception at a dark heritage site through mixed-method approach

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between tourists’ motivations, perception of tourism impacts, place attachment (PA) and loyalty toward Jallianwala Bagh, a dark heritage site in Punjab, India.Design/methodology/approachA mixed-method approach comprising qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Semi-structured interviews and the Delphi method helped generate a 34-item survey instrument. A sample size of 869 respondents was obtained, split into two subsets for exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.FindingsSeven out of nine hypotheses were supported. Motivated tourists perceived higher positive tourism impacts but lower negative tourism impacts. Higher perceptions of positive tourism impacts increased both PA and loyalty to the destination. Surprisingly, the perception of negative tourism impacts did not significantly affect tourist loyalty, contrary to some previous research.Practical implicationsThis study informs stakeholders about tourists’ cognitive and affective responses at a dark tourism site, aiding in the planning and development of sustainable tourism strategies.Social implicationsBy understanding the tourists’ motivations and perceptions, stakeholders can manage tourism impacts more effectively, ensuring that tourists’ experiences align with sustainable practices.Originality/valueThis study enriches the understanding of the tourists’ complex interactions with dark heritage sites. It introduces a new angle by examining how motivations, PA and perceptions of tourism impacts influence tourist loyalty, especially in the context of dark tourism.

Understanding dark tourism rituality (DTR): scale development and validation

ABSTRACT Dark tourism has long struggled with the moral conundrum of how death and violence can be seen as tourist attractions. However, ‘rituality’ can be considered to answer this conundrum. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this study developed a dark tourism rituality scale (DTR Scale) with 12 items in four dimensions: ritual space experience, ritual element experience, ritual participation experience, and ritual significance experience. These dimensions demonstrate the process of dark sites’ transformation from the ‘unacceptable’ to the ‘sacred’. For the first time, this study quantifies the dark tourism process, which constructs its legitimacy and significance through rituality. This study reveals not only the individual dark tourists’ psychological experience, but also the political and economic characteristics of dark tourism rituality, and provides a systematic and measurable theoretical reference for future theory and practice.

Dark tourism: The effect of visiting a mausoleum on a tourist’s psychological mood state in the central Asian city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan

This paper examines the psychological effects of dark tourism by analyzing the feelings and emotions of domestic and international tourists who visited a mausoleum. Dark tourism sites have received considerable attention as a growing phenomenon in the 21st century. Dark tourism is associated with death, disasters, and atrocities; and includes places such as murder sites, battlefields, cemeteries, and places where tragedies have taken place. The Gur-e-Amir Mausoleum in the Central Asian city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan was chosen as a dark tourism site. A convenience sample of 21 visitors, of which 10 were international travelers and 11 were from Central Asian countries, agreed to be individually interviewed using a qualitative methodology. The results found that a range of emotions were expressed during the visit, with the majority of visitors expressing positive emotions on a scale from good to great, which included feelings of contentment, astonishment, excitement, and admiration at the conclusion of their visit. For many of the local visitors of the Islamic faith, it also provided a religious experience that for, some included prayer and meditation.

Dark tourism development in a leisure destination: the perceptions of the local community in Cyprus

ABSTRACT The aim of this exploratory study was to increase the understanding of the perceptions of local communities of dark tourism development in a leisure destination and whether their perceptions could have an impact on the further development or hindrance of dark sites. Cyprus was used as a focal point for the study, an island that is a popular holiday destination but nonetheless has its share of locations and sites related to dark tourism. Social exchange theory was used as a theoretical instrument to examine the local communities’ perceptions. Qualitative research was conducted with three study groups using interviews. It used thematic analysis to identify various themes associated with dark tourism based on the perceptions of the local community. Only a little evidence was found that the concept of dark tourism plays a role in the tourism industry in a leisure destination. The overall positive shared perceptions encourage support for the development of dark tourism; thus, it points to the need to find ways to align future policies with the perceptions and opinions of the local community. This study contributed to knowledge by conceptualizing the role of local communities in dark tourism development.

A Big Data architecture for early identification and categorization of dark web sites

The dark web has become notorious for its association with illicit activities and there is a growing need for systems to automate the monitoring of this space. This paper proposes an end-to-end scalable architecture for the continuous early identification of new Tor sites and the daily analysis of their content. The solution is built using an Open Source Big Data stack for data serving with Kubernetes, Kafka, Kubeflow, and MinIO, continuously discovering onion addresses in different sources (threat intelligence, code repositories, web-Tor gateways, and Tor repositories), downloading the HTML from Tor and deduplicating the content using MinHash LSH, and categorizing with the BERTopic modeling (SBERT embedding, UMAP dimensionality reduction, HDBSCAN document clustering and c-TF-IDF topic keywords). In 93 days, the system identified 80,049 onion services and characterized 90% of them, addressing the challenge of Tor volatility. A disproportionate amount of repeated content is found, with only 6.1% unique sites. From the HTML files of the dark sites, 31 different low-topics are extracted, manually labeled, and grouped into 11 high-level topics. The five most popular included sexual and violent content, repositories and search engines, carding, cryptocurrencies, and marketplaces. During the experiments, we identified 14 sites with 13,946 clones that shared a suspiciously similar mirroring rate per day, suggesting an extensive common phishing network. Among the related works, this study is the most representative characterization of onion services based on topics to date.

Dark Tourism Destination Sustainability: Assessing Visitors’ Motivation and Experience towards Disaster Sites in Malaysia

The primary purpose of this research is to understand how the dark tourism business related to disasters can be sustained by providing evidence from the visiting experiences. Specifically, the objective is to answer two-fold research questions. The opinions of 182 visitors who had experienced visiting the disaster were obtained through a survey questionnaire. Descriptive analysis verified the visitors' dark tourism motivation and emotional experiences for further decisions by responsible authorities and tourism operators to improve the shortcomings of dark tourism sites based on tourists' experience of dark tourism in Malaysia. The results are, however, constrained by the snowballing sampling approach.

From the garden to the grave – three dark sites related to the legend of Pedro and Inês

By combining an interpretive reading of the spaces, a study of DMOs marketing strategies and TripAdvisor ratings, this research aims to understand the role of literary constructions, symbols, and discourses in the development, positioning, and management of a dark literary site. Three specific places will be highlighted in relation to the biography of the legend of King Pedro I and Inês de Castro, the "skeleton queen", assessing how these heritage sites exploit the legend for place branding, attracting visitors and creating a strong identity. In addition, this article aims to evaluate how and to what extent three heritage sites—Santa Clara a Velha's Church, Quinta da Lágrimas in Coimbra, and Alcobaça Monastery—associate themselves with the legend of Pedro and Inês, in order to increase their attractiveness, concluding that all the literary resonances of these locations can be traced to Luís Vaz de Camões’ The Lusiads. As for the dark elements, while Quinta das Lágrimas and Alcobaça Monastery combine literary with a macabre appeal, notably Alcobaça, the darkest of the three, Santa a Clara a Velha's Church is primarily of a biographic nature. Additionally, the macabre use of the space in this case appears to overpower the literary associations.

From colonial company housing to dark tourism site: the complex legacy of the Mitsubishi Workers’ Housing in Samneung

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the significance of the preservation of the Mitsubishi Workers’ Housing Complex in Samneung, Korea by examining its landscape and historical context as a legacy of colonial power during the Japanese rule of Korea. Mitsubishi Workers’ Housing is the only remaining living quarters in Korea used by the workers of the Mitsubishi Military Factory, many of whom were forcibly mobilized, where human rights abuses and labor exploitation were a daily routine. It remains a symbol of poverty to this day and has been neglected on the periphery of urban development. Through field visits and interviews, this paper argues the importance of the site, which is historical evidence of forced labor mobilization, as a place of modern cultural heritage and a dark tourism site, so that it may be reborn as a place for historical awareness and education to prevent historical tragedies from repeating themselves.

Residents’ emotional and behavioral responses to visiting Maras (Varosha) as a dark tourism spot

ABSTRACT Drawing upon evolutionary explanations of emotions and social appraisal theory, the present study investigated the emotional and behavioral responses exhibited by residents of Varosha during their visits to this specific dark tourism destination located in Famagusta, North Cyprus. To accomplish this objective, a qualitative research design was employed, involving interviews conducted with a select group of these residents. For data collection, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, the researchers proposed a framework that delineates four sequential stages encompassing background emotions, pre-visit emotions, emotions experienced during the visit, and subsequent behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, various external factors prevalent within society that influence the emotional and behavioral outcomes of the residents were also identified. The findings of this study demonstrated that dark tourism sites possess the potential to symbolize notions of peace, hope, and interdependent relationships, and serve as a vehicle for educating future generations about past acts of inhumanity.

TOURISTS’ MOTIVATIONS FOR VISITING DARK SKY SITES: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN CHINA

Dark sky tourism as a form of niche tourism is gaining popularity worldwide. However, empirical research examining what motivates tourists to seek out this type of experience is lacking. This research note contributes to bridging this knowledge gap by employing push-pull theory to explore tourists’ motivations for visiting dark sky sites. Adopting a qualitative netnographic approach, Chinese tourists’ perspectives were explored through twenty-two semi-structured interviews. Eleven thematic factors were extracted and mapped within a refined push and pull motivation framework. The findings show how push and pull factors motivate both first-time and repeat visitors to gain dark sky experiences.

Assessing the impact of selfie-taking tourists on local tour guides in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: a netnographic analysis of a dark tourism location

ABSTRACT Self-portrayed photographs, more commonly known as selfies, are a modern way of expressing oneself at popular tourist destinations. Selfies enable individuals to be seen by others on the web. There has been fierce debate about whether taking selfies is appropriate from an ethical standpoint at tourist places with darker and more sensitive histories. This study, a first of its kind, is a multi-method analysis of tour guides’ emotions towards selfie-taking tourists in the dark tourism location of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. As a phenomenon that has been introduced fairly recently, extant research has addressed the consequences selfies have on dark touristic sites, but no current study has considered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The methods used to evaluate the current situation are netnography and one-on-one, in-depth interviews with Chernobyl tour guides. Findings show that there has been a degree of conflict between tour guides and tourists who take selfies. Performance of emotional labor is detected amongst some tour guides. Interestingly, this result emerged more during interviews than from data mining in the online community. Managers of the site of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are advised to look into ways of implementing a more responsible tourist behavior structure.

The first dark sky map of Chiang Rai : three decades of change affecting Astro-tourism

We present the first Chiang Rai dark sky map, measurements of the calibrated zenith artificial night sky brightness at sea level, which covers data since 1992–2021. The Data were collected from two US satellites including the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program with the Operational Line Scan System (DMSP-OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS). Images containing ratios of artificial light to natural light were originally excluded from sunlight, solar glare, moon light, lunar illuminance, lightning features from the aurora, clouds, fires and background noise. Based on the correlation between data from the overlapped year 2013, the result showed the great matching relationship between DMSP-OLS and NPP-VIIRS data (R2 = 0.92) which revealed the mathematical model was feasible and reliable. The number of dark sky areas over Chiang Rai in the past 3 decades was classified in 8 classes based on the sky brightness in Bortle scale colour code and in magnitude : 1. Excellent dark sky sites (>21.9 mag, black), 2. Dark sky (21.9-21.5 mag, grey), 3. Rural sky (21.5-21.3 mag, blue), 4. Suburban/Rural transition sky (21.3-20.1 mag, green), 5. Suburban sky (20.1-19.1 mag, yellow), 6. Bright suburban sky (19.1-19.5 mag, orange), 7. City/suburban transition sky (19.5-18.0 mag, red)and 8. City sky (<18.0 mag, white). It was found that 14% of area in Chiang Rai are covering by the bright sky with Bortle class 7 and 8. Within this only 14% of area dwell more than 33% of population that have now already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way. In addition, a risk assessment model for dark sky conservation revealed that dark sky area are dramatically becoming extinction. It was suggested that Chiang Rai will not have an area suitable for stargazing by 2040 if there is no designated area for conservation. Our map could ultimately encourage land owners of such dark sky sites to register their properties in the IAU dark sky reserve database to elevate Astro-tourism in Chiang Rai.

The role of communities in preserving, using and remembering heritage: archaeological monuments and dark heritage sites in Estonia

ABSTRACT This article deals with the question of how communities relate to their heritage in Estonia by focusing on four case studies, two of which represent archaeological sites and two dark heritage sites, and the respective communities involved with these places. The main objective is to understand the dynamics of how heritage communities preserve, use and remember their heritage. Another aim is to explore contemporary community-based and participatory heritage management practices in Estonia and how they relate to the ideals described in the Faro Convention. We examine how the location, the contribution of researchers and personal connections to historic places motivate local people, enthusiasts and the state to care for the sites. It is demonstrated that community-based heritage management is most effective when people are emotionally attached to historic sites, have a sense of ownership and want others to engage with and experience them.

A critical review of research on translation and memory

Abstract This article presents a critical review of a bourgeoning interdisciplinary research trend in the English-language literature that integrates Translation Studies and Memory Studies. After sketching its emergence over the past three decades or so, the article recounts main theoretical contributions in this research trend to explain how scholars promote an idea of translation as memory and expound on political and ethical issues. It then reports on analytical scholarship on specific cases of translation that take on different memory themes, including (1) the Holocaust, genocide and mass killing, (2) war, conflict, and other dark memories, and (3) traditions and sites of memory. Finally, to anticipate a more diversified prospect of the research trend, it is suggested that researchers adopt more concepts and theories from recent transcultural memory studies, and attend more to memory cultures, themes, and practices in different, especially non-Western, contexts.

The rise of paranormal investigations as virtual dark tourism on YouTube

ABSTRACT This paper proposes the rising popularity of paranormal investigations on YouTube as a new form of armchair travel, namely virtual dark tourism. To support this discovery, this study gathered statistics on this new genre of virtual dark tourism on YouTube; uncovered the most common types of dark tourism sites visited by paranormal investigators; and details the typical paranormal investigation genre conventions in the method of storytelling used on Sam and Colby's (2014, YouTube [YouTube Channel]. YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2023 https://www.youtube.com/c/samandcolby/about) which arguably led to its high-level of success on YouTube. The study highlights some of the dangers, risks, and ethical considerations for future tour guides and researchers for this type of dark tourism. It also summarises the methods of income generated by YouTubers conducting paranormal investigation tours, which can be informative for future businesses and content creators. This study was investigated using digital ethnography, and distant and close reading of 60 YouTube channels which focus specifically on the niche of paranormal investigations (i.e. ghost hunting).