Dark Tourism Destination Sustainability: Assessing Visitors’ Motivation and Experience towards Disaster Sites in Malaysia

Abstract

The primary purpose of this research is to understand how the dark tourism business related to disasters can be sustained by providing evidence from the visiting experiences. Specifically, the objective is to answer two-fold research questions. The opinions of 182 visitors who had experienced visiting the disaster were obtained through a survey questionnaire. Descriptive analysis verified the visitors' dark tourism motivation and emotional experiences for further decisions by responsible authorities and tourism operators to improve the shortcomings of dark tourism sites based on tourists' experience of dark tourism in Malaysia. The results are, however, constrained by the snowballing sampling approach.