Dark Tourism: Cognitive and Affective Factors that motivate interest in destinations fueled by environmental disasters
Dark Tourism. Disaster Tourism. Cognitive factors. Afetive factors.
Dark tourism is made of destinations related in some way to death, suffering and the macabre. The different attractions and destinations that fit into this segment form sub-segments of it, such as cemetery tourism, war tourism and disaster tourism, which will be the focus of this study. Disaster tourism occurs when tourists visit a place where tragedy has occurred, and its traces and consequences are still visible. Based on the premise that this type of tourism can be disturbing and apparently does not prioritize leisure, as other tourist segments do, the objective of the present study is to investigate the interrelationships between cognitive and affective factors capable of influencing people to visit places where environmental disasters occurred. In accordance with the study objective, the conceptual model of factors that influence the intention to revisit a dark destination, proposed by Zhang, et al. (2016) was adapted to the reality of disaster tourism. The research is defined as hypothetical-deductive, descriptive-exploratory, with a quantitative approach through the use of IBM SPSS and AMOS software version 22.0. The results indicate that the dimensions derived from both the basic conceptual model and those added afterwards from a bibliographic review, are expressive components of the Cognitive and Positive and Negative Affective Factors. From the composite structural model, it was noticed that the Intention to Visit disaster destinations is influenced directly by Positive Affectivity and indirectly by Negative Affectivity. Due to the non-significant trail coefficient, it cannot be said that Cognitive factors influence the Intention to Visit. Thus, it is concluded that the individual's emotional and intrinsic issues are more relevant in his intention to visit disaster destinations than rational elements.