Does a visitor of dark sites have a dark personality?

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.

Dark Tourists: Profile, Practices, Motivations and Wellbeing

“…Furthermore, those who visit natural tragedies sites present higher values in hostility and tourism wellbeing than those who do not. This result reflects the relationship of this tourist practice with the above-mentioned dark triad [16,[32][33][34] and is in line with Kidron [61], who suggested wellbeing in dark tourists. At last, those who stop to see accidents present higher values in rumination on sadness, self-hatred, hostility, psychological vulnerability, and tourism wellbeing than those who do not stop.…”

“…Therefore, hypothesis H4 cannot be confirmed. These results apparently seem to contradict the relationship between the dark triad of the personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) and the practice of dark tourism [16,[32][33][34]. That relationship, studied by those authors, reflects the practice of dark tourism and not the knowledge about it (which is the subject of our study), although there is hardly any knowledge without practice.…”

“…In fact, dark tourists are not altruistic persons [14,60]. Moreover, Jovanovic, Mijatov, and Šuligoj [32] found that Machiavellianism was related to the preference for dark exhibitions, psychopathy to the preference for visiting conflict/battle sites, and sadism was negatively related to the preference for fun factories and dark tourism sites. However, the "darker" motivation may present different levels of intensity; besides the fascination and interest in death [15], these visits are also motivated by personal, cultural, and psychological reasons [4] and/or by entertainment purposes such as entertainment-based museums of torture [7,16].…”

“…Some authors who study dark tourism have tried to relate dark tourist practice with personality characteristics, namely with the dark triad-psychoticism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism [16,[32][33][34]. However, the nature of dark tourism, especially that related to the Holocaust, can be so complex that the personality characteristics that motivate it may be less central, so we decided to study the following characteristics: rumination in sadness, self-hatred, hostility, and psychological vulnerability.…”