Pleasure Through Pain: An Empirical Examination of Benign Masochism in Tourism

Abstract

Paradoxical at first sight, some tourists engage in activities involving negative emotions and even physical pain. Tourism scholars have begun investigating this phenomenon and have called for more of such research. Against this background, the authors introduce to tourism the notion of benign masochism, defining it as a trait describing a person’s tendency to embrace and seek pleasure through safely playing with a stimulating level of physical pain and negative emotions. In doing so, the authors root benign masochism in the notion of play from evolutionary psychology and develop a benign masochism scale that is able to predict various tourism outcomes, including willingness to visit a haunted house, to go on a challenging adventure holiday, and to visit a nuclear disaster site. The authors conclude by discussing theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and future opportunities for research.

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.…”

“…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.…”

The impact of eudaimonic well-being on experience and loyalty: a tourism context

“…Later, tourist emotions were examined under the categorical approach with positive and/or negative polarity (Mitas and Bastiaansen, 2018; Nawijn and Biran, 2019). Some evidence, for example, shows that negative emotions such as fear, stress and anger are actively sought and contextually relevant in certain tourism types (Nawijn and Biran, 2019; Norfelt et al , 2022), with particular reference to contexts like dark tourism (Knobloch et al , 2017), in which negative emotions positively predict tourists’ behavioral intentions (Nawijn and Fricke, 2015). Conversely, a preponderance of studies suggests that negative emotions can actually be experienced in any travel scenario because of situational factors (e.g.…”

Dark tourism, the holocaust, and well-being: A systematic review

“…Those who are interested in experiencing the death and suffering of others [ 61 ] for enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction are dark tourists [ 121 ]. Furthermore, the notion of benign masochism describes a person's tendency to embrace and seek pleasure through safely playing with a stimulating level of physical pain and negative emotions [ 76 ]. Jovanovic et al [ 126 ] found that Machiavellianism was positively related to the preference for dark exhibitions; psychopathy to a preference for visiting conflict/battle sites; and sadism was negatively related to the preference for fun factories as an additional type of dark tourism site.…”