Factors affecting tourists’ emotional reactions during a visit to a dark attraction: a conceptual model

ABSTRACT This study proposes a novel conceptual model for exploring how the interaction between first, the severity of the dark event(s) related to dark attractions, secondly, the recency of the event(s) related to the attraction, and third, the sharing of a common heritage with the event(s) related to the attraction, can affect tourists’ emotional reactions while visiting dark attractions. This study reviews the literature on the generalisability of dark attractions, as well as the current state of the art on tourists’ emotional reactions during visits to dark attractions, focusing on the effects of severity (i.e. number of deaths) and recency (i.e. number of years ago) of the dark event, as well as the sharing of a common heritage with the dark event. The proposed conceptual model differs from previous ones by focusing on a 2 × 2×2 framework, thus enabling measuring each variable’s effect on tourists’ emotional reactions. Implications for adopting and testing the proposed conceptual model are discussed.