Ethical and Social Determinants Capable of Influencing the Intention to Visit Dark Destinations
Dark tourism; Visit Intention; Dual-Process Theory; Social Influence Theory
Tourist travel motivated by tragic events has been named Dark tourism, which occurs when tourists visit places associated with death, pain, or suffering. This practice can encourage the preservation and conservation of sites with sensitive heritage, as well as educate tourists about historical events and provide an intense emotional experience. However, its direct connection to real tragedies raises ethical debates about this form of tourism, since places where deaths and/or real tragedies occurred tend to be less socially accepted than sites inspired by Dark themes but created for tourism purposes. In this context, the goal of this study is to investigate the interrelationships between ethical and social factors that may influence people’s intention to visit Dark tourism destinations. To this end, a structural model was proposed based on Dual-Process Theory (Greene, 2007) and Social Influence Theory (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), which address ethical and social aspects, respectively. The study is characterized as hypothetic-deductive and adopts a mixed qualitative–quantitative approach, using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), prototypical analysis through Free Word Association, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), supported by the softwares EndNote, VOSviewer, IRaMuTeQ, SPSS v23, and AMOS. The results indicate that the intention to visit Dark tourism destinations is explained mainly by the combined effects of emotional response and rational response, with deontological judgment playing a central and mediating role in this process. In other words, beyond showing interest through cognitive perceptions and emotional reactions, intention tends to increase when respondents consider the visit morally acceptable. Social conformity was not relevant for explaining intention in the tested model. Therefore, it was removed from the respecified model, which retains only the explanatory core based on emotional response, rational response, and deontological judgment to understand visit intention.