Abstract
Dark tourism has grown to be a major part of the visitor economy worldwide, with an increasing number of people traveling to visit the sites which commemorate natural or man-made disasters. However, promoting such sites as potential dark tourism attractions is still rare in China. Moreover, despite the increasing academic investigation of tourist experience at dark sites, most studies have focused on western tourists and sites. It is still unclear how Chinese tourists may understand and respond to their domestic dark tourism experience. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a theoretically integrated approach to understanding dark tourism consumption that does not necessarily belong to the western tradition. To achieve this, the present study explores dark tourism experience value in the Chinese context on the one hand, and on the other hand propose an integrated model to complete understanding of the relationships between internalized cultural values and norms, place attachment driven by environmental psychology, and post-experience evaluation. This study takes a quantitative approach based on a structured questionnaire survey in Wenchuan, China, a well-known dark tourism destination revitalized and innovated from the devastating 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. The findings of this study provide the holistic view of dark tourism consumption experience in Chinese context, identify the epistemic benefits perceived by the Chinese tourists, and reveal among domestic Chinese visitors to the post-disaster destination a strong association between collectivism and perceived obligation and responsibility. This study contributes to the theoretical development of tourism experience in general as well as enrich the literature in the dark tourism area. In addition, it draws some practical implications on responsible and culturally sensitive management and marketing of dark tourism attractions.