An attempt to clarify what deserves to remain dark: A long look back

Abstract

This paper aims at developing a bibliometric analysis of previous studies focused on dark tourism and thanatourism in order to map the structure and development of scientific production in this field. Moreover, this paper intends to identify which are the main research topics that require further investigation, contributing to shape a future research agenda. This research follows a mixed-method based on both qualitative and quantitative analyses, which is also supported by a systematic review process. The results show a particular growth in the interest in dark tourism since 2008. It has moved from a neglected research area to a relevant topic in the tourism literature. Besides, a lack of consensus can be observed on different aspects such as definition, scope, or motivation nature, essentially, due to its multidisciplinary nature. This has favoured a relatively disperse body of literature. This research contributes to bringing clarity to the field of dark tourism and thanatourism by providing an overview of its evolution and current status. Moreover, this study provides a comprehensive and organized summary of the diverse approaches, perspectives, and research trends. In doing so, this research enriches the lively debate on dark tourism, offering a greater understanding of what death, and related concepts, mean and imply to the present and future of tourism.

Keywords

Dark tourism thanatourism grief tourism genocide incarceration

Introduction

In the last decades, travelling to places associated with death, disaster, or human suffering has become a significant tourist attraction. As noted by Stone and Sharpley (2008), this is not a new phenomenon since individuals have long been drawn towards sites and events linked to violence or death (e.g. Roman gladiatorial games, human sacrifices in pre-Columbian cultures, or medieval public executions). As a business activity, the so-called ‘dark tourism’ is conceived as “an encounter with different kinds of remembrance of mortality and fatality” (Lennon et al., 2017: p. 228) more than a form of pilgrimage tourism, as it was defined in their original conceptualization. The growing interest in this type of tourism industry has brought about growing research in this area (Light, 2017). For example, Cai et al. (2022) have recently recognized the potential of dark tourism to accelerate recovery processes in regions and geographic areas particularly affected by the COVID pandemic. Similarly, this phenomenon has gained much attention from the media (Lennon, 2010), having been included in the grid of digital streaming platforms (Wichtel, 2018).

The complexity and wide range of tourism activities related to death, suffering, violence, or disaster have resulted in the use of different terms in the literature. Thus, together with the widely used concept of ‘dark tourism’ (e.g. Bowman and Pezullo, 2010; Collins-Kreiner, 2016; Kang et al., 2012), some authors have coined other terms such as ‘thanatourism’ (e.g. Clarke and McAuley, 2016; Dunkley, 2015), ‘atrocity tourism’ and ‘atrocity heritage’ (Ashworth, 2002), or ‘grief tourism’ (Lewis, 2008). The first two terms −dark tourism and thanatourism− have been the most popular in the academic literature. Thus, Stone (2006) argues for multiple shades of dark tourism, proposing a continuum ranging from the darkest to the lightest. Furthermore, there is growing research on the different sides of dark tourism, such as wars (Virgili et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2017), incarceration (Casella and Fennelly, 2016; Weaver et al., 2018), genocide (Petrevska et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2017), slavery (Prayag et al., 2018), environmental disasters (Yan et al., 2016) or even festivals (Podoshen et al., 2018), among others.

In addition to this wealth of research, some authors have conducted systematic reviews of research in this area (e.g. Harttman, 2014; Light, 2017). However, to the best of our knowledge, no prior works have used a rigorous bibliometric methodology to analyse internal relationships in the literature on dark tourism based on their bibliographic data. Bibliometric is defined as an approach to evaluating and monitoring the progress of given disciplines by sorting data, including citations, author affiliations, keywords, themes discussed, and methods employed for published studies in the disciplines via basic/advanced statistical techniques (McBurney and McNovak, 2002). This methodology has been extensively applied in tourism studies (e.g. Jiang et al., 2017; Köseoglu et al., 2015; Shen et al., 2018).

Nevertheless, despite its recognized usefulness, there is a lack of discursive bibliometric structures that reveal unknown patterns in the evolution of the knowledge about dark tourism and thanatourism. Thus, this paper responds to claims that tourism research needs to “enrich the debates of the epistemological and ontological structure of knowledge creation in the field and make stronger theoretical advances [through] more research studies conducting relational bibliometric studies” (Koseoglu et al., 2016: p. 190). Accordingly, our investigation aims at developing a bibliometric analysis of previous studies focused on dark tourism and thanatourism in order to map the structure and development of scientific production in this field. For this purpose, this research follows a mixed-method based on both qualitative and quantitative analyses, which is also supported by a systematic review process (following authors such as Trandfield et al., 2003, and Denyer and Trandfield, 2009). This study will provide an overall view of the current status of the academic literature on this topic in the last 25 years (1996–2021), identifying the main topics and long-term development trends, and providing authors and journal rankings, and extensive information about the frequently cited scholars and works. In doing so, we intend to make two main contributions. First, the comprehensive review of previous research will be useful for scholars and academics to understand the potential of this study area to become a differentiated research stream, with its own objectives and managerial implications within research on tourism management. Second, this paper intends to identify which are the main research topics that require further investigation, contributing to shape a future research agenda.

This paper is structured as follows. First, an introduction to the study of dark tourism as a growing research area is provided. Second, the bibliometric method and network analysis is explained. Next, the research findings are presented and discussed. Finally, the study contributions and conclusions are provided, followed by the research limitations and suggestions for future studies.

Dark tourism as a field of research: motivation and interest

According to Pratt et al. (2019), the relationship between death and tourism is full of contradictions and irony. Despite medical progress, the death of others is still a source of bewilderment and fascination (Becker, 2007). For instance, the death of a loved one might generate a feeling of profound grief and misunderstanding, whereas the death of others might arise controversial feelings such as captivation, attractiveness, or admiration. That is, what makes dark tourism different is that it rarely concerns the deaths of ordinary people who pass away for natural reasons (Walter, 2009).

There is no consensus about the relationship between tourism and death. In an early paper, Foley and Lennon (1997) considered that remembrance, education or entertainment might be considered the central reasons. However, they revised their findings and argued tourism in this area is actually the outcome of mere curiosity or even as a part of the itineraries included by tour companies (Lennon and Foley, 2000). Under these circumstances, dark tourism is relegated to something casual, not highlighting the importance of the origin of its motivation. However, Ashworth and Hartmann (2005) determine three main reasons: curiosity about the unusual, attraction to horror, and desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity. Moreover, Krisjanous (2016) argues that tourist motivations for visiting dark sites can vary significantly from factors such as the desire to remember, through the need for preservation and restoration, to interest in genealogy and one’s own heritage. Likewise, this author emphasizes voyeurism and racial conflicts as additional sources for this type of tourism.

Light (2017) conducts a review of the dark tourism literature focused on motivations, identifying 20 reasons or motives for visiting places associated with death and suffering. This huge diversity indicates a lack of understanding about dark tourism, the desire or opportunity for education, visiting because of personal connections, a sense of duty or obligation and the desire to see it to believe it. From an anthropological perspective, Kaul and Skinner (2018) identify three different approaches to understanding the grief and mourning experienced through dark tourism. On the one hand, it is a source of fascination and an educational opportunity to learn about other cultures. On the other hand, it becomes a source of confusion and an additional emotional burden. Finally, deaths because of unfortunate events (e.g. natural disasters), chaotic and senseless situations become more confusing in an unfamiliar destination environment (Råholm et al., 2008). Furthermore, Stone et al. (2018) argue the existence of multiple origins for dark tourism, including economic paradigms of supply and demand, and issues of dissonance, politics, historicity and sociological understanding of death and collective memory.

Another interesting approach to the different motivations and reasons for dark tourism is shown in the study conducted by Podoshen et al. (2018), where the authors emphasize, not only traditional sources of dark tourism, such as simulation, questioning morality and the challenge of order and rationality, but also new theoretical insights to this notion that reveal the relevance of novelty or the threat of harm (termed danger-zone tourism). In any case, according to Wu and Chen (2018), there are seven drivers that increase supportive intentions towards dark tourism: participation, innovation, experiential risk, experiential memorability, experiential satisfaction, experiential trust, and experiential involvement of dark tourism sites.

Overall, this review shows that dark tourism has been examined extensively in the literature, but the significant body of knowledge about this topic remains unclear and fuzzy. Consequently, new insights are necessary to clarify past advances in this field and to identify opportunities for further research. For this purpose, this research adopts bibliometric analysis as a means to depict the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress in the dark tourism literature.

Data and methods

A bibliometric analysis is adopted in this research, although the systematic review process proposed by Trandfield et al. (2003) and Denyer and Trandfield (2009) is adapted to complement it. Thus, we obtain the benefits of both; on the one hand, the bibliometric analysis helps to analyse relationships among articles, citations, and keywords, to provide comprehensive information in a specific field (Feng et al., 2017). On the other hand, the systematic review process is the best form of producing, synthesising, and reporting the evidence of the existing research studies on a specific field from a large number of studies. This is of particular interest in areas such as social science due to its utility to identify areas of consensus and disagreement between researchers (Perkmann et al., 2013). Besides, it adds value since it helps to favour the replicability and, therefore, improves the quality of the process. As other previous bibliometric analysis (see Casado-Belmonte et al., 2021; Terán-Yepez et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2022), the process encompasses three main steps: planning the process, conducting the review, and preliminary findings.

Planning the process

The focus is to identify as much as possible about dark tourism, so the three most commonly used concepts for its identification are chosen for the search: dark tourism, grief tourism and thanatourism.

Conducting the review

Empirical support for this investigation is gathered from two databases (i) Scopus database, which comprises a significant number of journals (Capobianco-Uriarte et al., 2019; Granda-Orive et al., 2013; Hernández-González et al., 2016), and (ii) Web of Science, data in this database complements those available on Scopus. Despite this, and to cover the topic to its fullest, both databases are chosen for this bibliometric analysis. This is critical in a topic such as dark tourism as it has been approached from different points of view. Therefore, the more extensive the range to cover, the better the results.

Subsequently, the keywords were entered in the databases using excluding syntax in one main step which highlights the defining issue. Additionally, we focused on peer-review journals and articles published in English before 2022 not drawing on work-in-progress. To conduct our search, we used keywords related to dark tourism. According to Shondell and Gonzales (2013), dark tourism is sometimes referred to as grief tourism and as thanatourism. Our database consisted of 647 articles (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Searching steps.

Steps	Web of science	Scopus	Total
(TITLE-ABS-KEY (“dark tourism”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“grief tourism”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“thanatourism”)	514	385	899
Peer-reviewed	460	255	715
Language (limited to English)	434	250	684
Time span (before 2022)	426	244	670
Duplicated	—	−183	647

Results

Descriptive results

Figure 1 shows the number of publications. Our observation period can be divided into three sub-periods: (1) the initial stage, from 1996 to 2008, where less than 10 documents were published per year; (2) the booming growth stage, from 2009 to 2013, when the number of published articles ranged from 20 to 30 days; and (3) the sharp growth stage (2014–2021), which observed the highest number of publications, 88 articles in 2017. The latest sub-period accounted for 73% of total publications.

Figure 1.

Number of publications over the years.

Table 2 shows the impact of research on dark tourism, as measured by the number of citations. When it comes to a topic that has a certain maturity and consolidation in the literature, the number of citations usually increases. However, in this case, it can be seen that the oldest documents are the ones that account for the most significant number of citations. This indicates that these can be seminal articles that serve as a basis for the rest and such maturity or stability in the subject has not yet been reached.

Table 2.

Evolution of the documents and cites over the years.

Year	No. Documents	Cites	Cites/No
1996	2	456	228.00
1999	2	205	102.50
2000	1	53	53.00
2001	2	43	21.50
2002	3	204	68.00
2003	4	582	145.50
2004	1	22	22.00
2005	1	4	4.00
2006	9	554	61.56
2007	8	367	45.88
2008	9	459	51.00
2009	19	380	20.00
2010	22	320	14.55
2011	33	940	28.48
2012	27	641	23.74
2013	27	402	14.89
2014	36	306	8.50
2015	57	362	6.35
2016	53	229	4.32
2017	88	111	1.26
2018	83	58	0.70
2019	48	254	5.29
2020	51	217	4.25
2021	61	43	0.70

Table 3 shows journals that published 10 or more articles on dark tourism. Such journals account for 35% (173 articles) of total publications. Annals of Tourism Research comes first with 31 documents, y followed by the Journal of Heritage Tourism (25), and Tourism Management (19). Furthermore, articles published in Annals of Tourism Research also account for the largest number of citations (2134). Tourism Management ranks second by the number of citations, and also with an enormous difference. However, despite Journal of Heritage Tourism raking second by the documents published, has a modest rate of citation. Other journals that are worth to mention are Current Issues in Tourism, which accounts 255 citations with only 15 documents. In a similar situation lays International Journal of Culture Tourism and Hospitality Research, which rank 10^th by the number of documents published but account an average of 16 cites per document.

Table 3.

Journal with 10 or more published articles.

Ranking	Journal name	Country	Documents	Citations	C/D
1	Annals of tourism research	United Kingdom	31	2134	68.84
2	Journal of heritage tourism	United Kingdom	25	316	12.64
3	Tourism management	United Kingdom	19	720	37.89
4	Tourist studies	United States	17	269	15.82
5	Current issues in tourism	United Kingdom	15	255	17.00
6	Worldwide hospitality and tourism themes	United Kingdom	15	55	3.67
7	International journal of tourism cities	United Kingdom	15	9	0.60
8	Journal of tourism and cultural change	United Kingdom	14	158	11.29
9	Tourism geographies	United Kingdom	12	128	10.67
10	International journal of culture tourism and hospitality research	United Kingdom	10	163	16.30

Bibliometric analysis

Citation analysis

The citation analysis pretends to measure the influence and relevance of elements such as author or documents. In this sense, if the citation index of a publication or an author is high, these will be considered as influential in such field.

Author influence

Table 4 shows authors publishing the highest number of papers as well as the citations gathered by such pieces. Korstanje and Lennon are the most prolific authors, whereas Seaton (619) and Stone (432) are the most cited authors.

Table 4.

Top 10 authors with most publications on dark tourism.

Author	Institution	Documents	Citations	C/D
Korstanje, Maximiliano	University of Palermo	11	97	8.82
Lennon, John	Glasgow Caledonian university	11	225	20.45
Isaac, Rami	Breda university of applied science	10	92	9.20
Piche, Justin	University of Ottawa	10	37	3.70
Stone, Philip	University of central Lancashire	10	432	43.20
Walby, Kevin	University of Winnipeg	10	37	3.70
Winter, Carolina	William Angliss Institute	10	43	4.30
Zhang, Jie	Nanjing university	10	68	6.80
SeatonA.V.	University of Bedfordshire	7	619	88.43
Podoshen, Jeffrey	Franklin and Marshal College	6	133	22.17

Affiliation statistics

Table 5 lists the top 10 research institutions publishing the most articles on dark tourism. In this sense, the University of Central Lancashire leaders the ranking with 14 documents published. This is followed by the University of Palermo, the University of Ottawa and Breda University of Applied Sciences with 10 documents for each organization. In this sense, there is a coincidence between the organization contributing the most and the author with the second-highest rate of citations (see Table 4). A similar situation happens with the University of Ottawa, Breda University of Applied Science, Glasgow Caledonian University, University of Winnipeg, and Franklin and Marshall College. This indicates that the most relevant documents, according to their number of citations, are concentrating in six Universities as they account for 12% of total documents published.

Table 5.

Top 10 research institutions contributing to the topic of dark tourism.

Institution	Location	Documents	Citation	C/D
University of central Lancashire	United Kingdom	14	679	48.5
University of Palermo	Italy	10	52	5.2
University of Ottawa	Canada	10	85	8.5
Breda university of applied sciences	Netherlands	10	107	10.7
Glasgow Caledonian university	United Kingdom	9	48	5.33
University of Winnipeg	Canada	9	85	9.44
Bournemouth university	United Kingdom	8	87	10.9
Griffith university	Australia	7	24	3.43
Franklin and Marshall College	USA	7	124	17.7
University of Ballarat	Australia	7	148	21.1

Table 6 shows the geographic distribution of contributing organizations. The United Kingdom is the country with the highest number of publications on dark tourism, whereas papers published by scholars affiliated with Israeli universities gathered the highest number of citations per article (33).

Table 6.

Geographic distribution of the top 10 countries contributing to the topic.

Country	Documents	Citations	C/A
United Kingdom	114	1673	14.68
USA	70	708	10.11
Australia	59	741	12.56
Canada	30	466	15.53
Netherlands	22	196	8.91
Peoples Republic of China	17	114	6.71
New Zealand	13	238	18.31
Israel	11	363	33.00
Argentina	10	55	5.50
Turkey	6	78	13.00

Leading documents

The number of citations is an indicator of the quality of an academic paper (Liao et al., 2018). Table 7 shows the most cited documents about dark tourism. By the number of citations, Seaton (1996) ranks first (304); this early paper argues that death is a constituent of tourism and more influential than any other one. Stone and Sharpley (2008) propose a model of dark tourism consumption within a thanatological framework. In the third most cited paper (247 citations), Stone (2006) suggests that dark tourism has a fluid and dynamic spectrum of intensity that gives a better understanding of where to locate and explore consumer demand, motivations, and experiences.

Table 7.

Top documents according to their number of citations about dark tourism.

Ranking	Journal name	Citation	Article title	Authors	Year	C/Year
1	International journal of heritage studies	304	Guided by the dark: from thanatopsis to thanatourism	SeatonA.V.	1996	66.67
2	Annals of tourism research	281	Consuming dark tourism: a Thanatological perspective	Stone, P.R.; Sharpley, R	2008	61.22
3	Turizam	247	A dark tourism spectrum: Toward a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions	StoneP.R.	2006	44.58
4	Tourism management	226	Investigating the relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, and recommendations: The case of the Korean DMZ	Lee, C.K.; Yoon, Y.S.; LeeS.K.	2007	61.58
5	Annals of tourism research	204	Shades of the dark tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island	Strange, C.; Kempa, M	2003	35.05
6	International journal of heritage studies	152	JFK and dark tourism: a Fascination with assassination	Foley, M.: LennonJ.J.	1996	33.33
7	Annals of tourism research	145	Sought experiences at (dark) heritage sites	Biran, A.; Poria, Y.; Oren, G	2011	15.43
7	Journal of heritage tourism	145	Heritage tourism in the 21st century: Valued traditions and new perspectives	Timothy, D.J.; BoydS.W.	2006	26.17
8	Annals of tourism research	141	War and thanatourism: Waterloo 1815–1914	SeatonA.V.	1999	68.78
9	Annals of tourism research	117	Auschwitz: Museum interpretation and darker tourism	MilesW.F.	2002	57.35
9	Annals of tourism research	117	Dark tourism and significant other death. Towards a model of mortality mediation	StoneP.R.	2012	18.25
10	Annals of tourism research	97	Gallipoli thanatourism: The meaning of ANZAC	Slade, P	2003	16.67

In the ranking of the 10 journals that have published more documents on dark tourism (Table 3), Annals of Tourism Research (first in the journal ranking) has published seven of the 10 most cited articles in this topic, including the second more cited.

Keywords analysis

Articles in our dataset reported 1424 different keywords. Once they were processed, and duplicities were eliminated, the remaining were selected to create a frequently used keyword list (see Table 8). In this sense, one of the most interesting things about the use of keywords is their evolution and incorporation onto the field. Therefore, Table 8 shows, apart from the use for the whole period, the distribution of the keywords for the three main stages (the initial, the booming, and the sharp growth stage).

Table 8.

Most frequently used keywords in the topic of dark tourism.

Keywords	1996–2021	%	1996–2008	%	2009–2013	%	2014–2021	%
Dark tourism	416	64.30	15	35.71	66	51.56	336	70.44
Death	212	32.77	6	14.29	14	10.94	192	40.25
Tourism	82	12.67	7	16.67	23	17.97	52	10.90
Thanatourism	75	11.59	8	19.05	20	15.63	47	9.85
Experience	69	10.66	—	—	7	5.47	62	13.00
War	54	8.35	5	11.90	11	8.59	38	7.97
Heritage	73	11.28	4	9.52	13	10.16	56	11.74
Museum	49	7.57	1	2.38	4	3.13	44	9.22
Memory	39	6.03	2	4.76	8	6.25	29	6.08
Motivation	42	6.49	1	2.38	6	4.69	35	7.34
Site	38	5.87	—	—	3	2.34	35	7.34
Authenticity	26	4.02	—	—	11	8.59	13	2.73
Emotion	33	5.10	1	2.38	4	3.13	28	5.87
Identity	25	3.86	1	2.38	8	6.25	16	3.35
Management	24	3.71	—	—	2	1.56	22	4.61
Battlefield tourism	27	4.17	1	2.38	11	8.59	16	3.35
Disaster	32	4.95	—	—	2	1.56	29	6.08
No. Documents (total period)	647	—	42	—	128	—	477	—

Dark tourism is the most common keyword used, appearing in 416 (64.30%) of the documents, followed by Death and Tourism, 212 and 82 times, respectively and Thanatourism (75). The rest of the keywords have a lesser impact (e.g. experience, war, heritage, and museum). Overall, this suggests the heterogeneity of the topic.

During the sub-period 1996–2008, most of the documents use Dark tourism. However, there is a significant concern about Thanatourism and War, also connected with the keyword Tourism. Furthermore, we found no trace of keywords such as Experience, Site, Authenticity, Management or Disaster. This suggests the initial stage is quite unsettled. During the period 2009–2013, Dark tourism maintains its keyword leadership, followed by Death, Thanatourism, and Heritage. Although other keywords showed some strength such as Heritage, Authenticity, and Battlefield. This suggests that this stage is based on trying new things and moves on, that is, based on a trial-and-error basis to develop the concept of dark tourism.

Finally, the sharp growth stage (2014–2021) is quite similar to the general one, as it comprises around 73% of the total documents. In this stage, keywords such as Experience, Museum, and Management become stronger. Consequently, this stage can be considered the most experimental and of expansion, looking for some boundaries that defined the vast range that dark tourism encompasses.

We calculated the network of relationships among keywords, according to their co-occurrence, to identify the most relevant topics examined by dark tourism research (see Figures 2–4). The size of the node indicates in the network indicates the number of citations of a keyword (Chen et al., 2016). Furthermore, the thicker the line that connects the nodes, the higher frequency of co-occurrence. Also, the shorter the distances between the nodes, the stronger the relationship they have (Capobianco-Uriarte et al., 2019).

Figure 2.

Network of relationship between keywords for the period “Gaining a foothold (1996–2008)”.

Figure 3.

Network of relationship between keywords for the period “Breaking the rules (2009-2013)”.

Figure 4.

Network of relationship between keywords for the period “Making the experience flourish (2014-2021)”.

Thus, Figure 2 shows five clusters: papers addressing thanatourism and death, heritage and prisoners, history and slavery, dark tourism and museum, and ghost tourism.

In Figure 3 the clusters are similar, but the number of topics and their complexity increase significantly. Overall, this shows the emergence of new approaches and conceptualizations as well as an attempt to go beyond the established boundaries.

Figure 4 shows a set of complex clusters and relationships. Dozens of associations appear between the terms. Topics such as dark tourism, death, thanatourism or museum gained much the attention. However, the fact of representing so many nodes indicates the versatility and breadth of the issue as it has been applied to multiple and different fields and also from different points of view.

Geographical map of the main studies on dark tourism

In order to shed light on the extensive and heterogeneous research that has been conducted on the nature and types of dark tourism, an additional analysis was developed based on the geographical area where the studied phenomena had taken place. The original sample of 487 articles was processed in order to eliminate, not only duplicities but also those studies that were not focused on a specific type of dark tourism (be it a theoretical or developmental study) and/or a particular area (country). As a result of this process, a final sample of 295 articles was selected to conduct a geographical analysis of studies on dark tourism.

For each work three variables were identified: 1) the place where the dark phenomenon took place; 2) the type of dark tourism that was studied; and 3) the university and country of the authors. After this process, a ranking of countries was elaborated according to the number of studies where the dark phenomenon was located. Table 9 shows that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are the main countries where events related to dark tourism have been analysed most frequently. It can be observed that around 57% of the studies were concentrated in geographical areas belonging to 10 countries and that these three countries (USA, UK, and Australia) account for more than 25% of the studies analysed.

Table 9.

Top-10 countries according to the number of studies focused on dark tourism in those countries.

Country	Number of studies	%
USA	28	10.0
United Kingdom	26	9.3
Australia	22	7.9
Turkey	14	5.0
Canada	13	4.7
China	13	4.7
Japan	13	4.7
Germany	12	4.3
France	11	3.9
Poland	8	2.9
TOTAL	160	57.3

Figure 5 shows worldwide research interest in dark tourism. Among the topics of dark tourism, war is present in most countries and, therefore, has attracted more researchers’ attention. We also observe regional interest in some topics, for example, the study of prisoners has attracted interest in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, while genocide has been the main area of interest in Germany and Poland. Finally, environmental disasters (e.g. earthquakes or tsunamis) constitute a hot topic in Japan and China. Therefore, regionalism plays a significant role in investigations on dark tourism. Thus, we can find a greater number of environmental disasters in Eastern countries (China and Japan), prisoners, slavery, and terrorism in Western countries (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, France), and genocide in European countries (Germany and Poland) directly linked to the II World War. Special attention deserves the battles that involved Turkey and Australia during the I World War as it has prompted studies by both countries. In addition, there is one important topic of dark tourism, that is, the one related to beliefs, especially those of cultural and/or religious basis.

Figure 5.

Geographical map of the studies on dark tourism.

As for the country where researchers are based, it generally coincides with the country where the phenomenon of dark tourism occurs. However, it is worth mentioning that the events in Germany and Poland, concerning genocide, have aroused great general interest. Therefore, researchers have approached this topic from different backgrounds. This occurs in a similar way to the events related to earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, which have attracted the attention of Western countries. In addition, we must highlight the predilection of Australian researchers for war events in France.

Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this research has been to provide new and additional analyses that complete previous review studies that have been developed on the dark tourism phenomenon. In doing so, this study sheds light on this research field by revealing patrons, emerging areas and future opportunities for research. For this purpose, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis has been conducted based on variables such as the number of publications over the years, the evolution of the documents and cites, the authors, journals and research institutions, the geographical distribution of the studies and the keywords. The empirical analysis has been conducted using a combination of the two main bibliographic databases, that is, Scopus and Web of Science, to guarantee the scope and extent of data and results in this research. Thus, this study shows how bibliometric visualization can provide new insights into an area of literature by better communicating key findings, facilitating the exploration of data, and providing rich information to academics and scholars.

Our findings show that there has been a particular growth of interest in dark tourism since 2008, with a qualitative leap especially relevant from 2013 to the present. During these years, dark tourism has changed from being a neglected research area to being a broad enough and relevant field of investigation that has become a promising research domain in the tourism literature (see, for example, recent studies by Jordan and Prayag, 2021; Sun and Lv, 2021; Wang et al., 2021). Therefore, the tourism-death-suffering relationship is an increasingly popular theme in tourism studies. However, so far, there has been no consensus on different aspects such as its definition, its scope, or the motivations for this type of tourism. This is due, in part, to its multidisciplinary nature that justifies the existence of multiple psychological, sociological, anthropological, economic and managerial approaches to this topic. In this sense, the first studies date from 1996 and can be considered seminal papers (e.g. Foley and Lennon, 1996; Seaton, 1996) since they lay the foundations for the study of dark tourism and provide the first approaches to its conceptualization and the analysis of its motivations. Despite this theoretical base, the study of dark tourism is relatively dispersed in the literature. Thus, the 10 most prolific authors only cover 20% of the studies analysed.

The research institutions where most of the studies have been developed are located in the United Kingdom, the United Stated and, to a lesser extent, in Australia and Canada. In this sense, there is a certain degree of dispersion in the geographic distribution of the institutions and universities. This phenomenon has increased in the last few years and shows a growing interest in dark tourism in many countries. Likewise, the journals that concentrate on research in this field are, at the same time, those of greatest impact and most relevant in the area of tourism management. This reveals the consolidation of dark tourism as an important research stream in the tourism literature.

The keywords analysis has allowed the identification of the main trends in the three development periods of the research identified. During the first period, running until 2008, the studies focus on the analysis of death and war as dimensions of tourist attraction, but without considering aspects related to emotions, authenticity, management of tourist destinations, or other forms of dark tourism. This reflects the initial stage of the creation of a study area, that is, gaining a foothold. This finding reveals that the origin of the study of dark tourism is clearly linked to the motivation of potential tourists and their interest in death and war as the main sources of this type of tourism. The second period, which begins in 2009, is characterized by a wide range of terms, such as heritage, with a low frequency in their appearance. Thus, the period can be considered as a stage of growth in which different areas are explored, breaking the rules, while there is no clear consensus on the predominant themes. Finally, in the third period, after 2013, there is notable growth in the number of studies (it comprises around 65% of the total documents). Terms such as experience, museum or management increase their use significantly and highlight the concentration around the terms Dark Tourism and Death, to detriment of the term Thanatourism. It is a process of making the experience flourish and putting the tourist’s needs first. This may be an indicator of the non-existence of clear differentiation between both forms of tourism (Light, 2017) and that the first term becomes the dominant one. Thus, our results show, through the identification of an increasing variety of concepts that have been studied in the literature, that dark tourism is a phenomenon that can be studied from multiple perspectives, not only from the tourist’s point of view (e.g. motivations, emotions, consumer behaviour, etc.) but also from the perspective of managers, intermediaries, local authorities and/or inhabitants. Moreover, our findings show that dark tourism is linked to multiple motivations and settings, such as murdering (e.g. genocide, war, terrorism), controlling/abusing (e.g. dictatorships, slavery), religious (e.g. sects, cult of death) or disasters (e.g. nuclear accident, natural disasters).

One of the main contributions of this research is the geographical analysis of the studies on dark tourism considering both the geographical origin of the studies (location of the research institutions) and the origin of the dark phenomena (country). The study shows a remarkable regional differentiation, which is explained by the history and heritage of the different countries that determine specific topics of dark tourism. This is reflected by the high correlation between the research institutions and where the dark phenomena studied occurs (or have occurred), and are always linked with the particular history of the country. This is explained by the motivation of researchers to develop works based on the special connection they have with the events that took place in their countries. This is maybe based on the same principles that move tourists to consume dark tourism. However, future studies should try to unlink the geographical area of the study institutions and/or their authors with the sources of dark tourism, as this inbreeding may limit the development of innovative and high-quality studies in geographical areas other than those with which there is a clear familiarity.

Likewise, specific cultural factors have a direct link with different modalities of dark tourism that can be considered as a remembrance of mortality and fatality, allowing those topics, directly or indirectly related to death, to be permanently present. In this way, tradition and culture maintain the social identity of certain groups alive (e.g. Day of the Dead in Mexico). In turn, it allows people to remember history and learn about the past. Dark tourism has the ability to raise awareness in society (e.g. wars, colonization or dictatorships), foster respect and tribute to victims (e.g. terrorism, genocide or slavery), or become aware of humanity’s fragility in the face of forces of nature (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes). Therefore, dark tourism allows creating and reinforcing an emotional connection between the tourist and the specific manifestation of dark tourism. Eventually, this contributes to reducing, to some extent, feelings such as fear or even uncertainty about the life after death. Our geographical analysis suggests that cultural and regional factors drive the specific dark tourism manifestation to be explored. For instance, environmental disasters are analysed in Eastern countries (China and Japan), while genocide is associated to some European countries (Germany and Poland). As an indirect result of the geographical analysis, it can be concluded that most of the research that has investigated specific phenomena of dark tourism in different countries has been based on qualitative and exploratory studies that have not gone beyond characterization of certain features.

Beyond showing that the tourism-death relationship is an increasingly popular issue, our bibliometric analysis has provided useful insights about dark tourism as a research area. From the main findings abovementioned, some future research lines can be identified. First, the role of social media nowadays is of vital importance as it can act as a mechanism to foster diffusion, motivation as well as destinations associated with dark tourism (Lennon et al., 2017: p. 232). However, this topic has received little attention in the dark tourism studies analysed. This connection deserves a more in-depth analysis of current tools are to be put into practice for the sake of tourism.

Second, there are highly researched dark phenomena (e.g. war, genocide or slavery) and others in which research is scarce (e.g. the cult of death, assassinations or supernatural beliefs). In addition, there are geographical areas with a great tradition in dark experiences (e.g. Mexico and the Day of the Dead, the Republic of Benin and the origin of the voodoo or Bangkok −Thailand− and the guardian spirits). Nevertheless, there are not many studies covering these areas. Therefore, there is great potential to advance in the research of dark tourism in relation to both the types of dark tourism and the places where they have occurred. For example, future studies could analyse the extent to which dark tourism can facilitate the social and/or economic recovery of certain geographic areas (e.g. regions affected by natural disasters, including pandemics), since this type of tourism can be associated with the community’s response to adversity (Cai et al., 2022; Korstanje and George, 2018). In addition, this imbalance leads to the need to classify the dark tourism topics as it can improve their comprehension through a better adaptation of theoretical approaches, especially motivational factors.

Third, people, because of the history of the country in which they grow up (or at least live long enough to develop identity) develop a particular predisposition towards a certain type of dark tourism (e.g. English people better understand the meaning of visiting cemeteries since they had the Romantic movement). The study of this historical heritage can be very useful to analyse and categorize a tourist typology with the aim of defining the target audience and to be able to offer the most customized experience possible. Four, the realization of quantitative studies that consider antecedents and effects of different manifestations of dark tourism could significantly enrich research in the area by requiring greater conceptual rigour and by facilitating the development of theoretical and empirical models (explanatory and predictive) generalizable in different contexts.

Finally, despite the benefits that dark tourism can have, sometimes it can also be considered as mere commercialization of death with the sole purpose of doing business without consideration of sustainability factors, destroying the heritage and authenticity of the place. It is important to find a balance between the motivations and the needs of consuming dark tourism and the need to ensure the long-term sustainability of dark tourist destinations. Therefore, future lines of research could address not only the importance of sustainable dark tourism but also the ways in which it can be implemented.

Notwithstanding its contribution, this study has some limitations, mainly related to the bibliometric techniques. Thus, despite the advantages of using the Scopus and Web of Science databases, other databases (e.g. ABI Inform or ProQuest) could be used to provide the widest possible coverage. Likewise, some documents did not contain any keywords by the authors. This has led to perform the analyses using the keywords assigned by the database. In some ways, this may not faithfully represent the original idea of the authors. Besides, as the concept of dark tourism is recently increasing in interest, the selection of the keywords can condition of the results.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-ERDF/FEDER-UE: R&D Project UAL2020-SEJ-D1872.

ORCID iD

Jorge Tarifa-Fernández

Author Biographies

Jorge Tarifa-Fernández is an Assistant Professor of Operation Management, Ph.D., University of Almeria, International Campus of Excellence in Agrifood (CeiA3), Spain. His research comprises topics about supply chain management, digital technology, and equal opportunities. He is author of several articles in scientific business journal, including Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Business Process Management, or International Journal of Management Education. His research interests include supply chain management, and inclusion & work wellbeing.

Eva Carmona-Moreno is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management, Ph.D., University of Almeria, International Campus of Excellence in Agrifood (CeiA3), Spain. Her research includes corporate environmental management, social responsibility, and management control practices. She is author of diverse articles in scientific business journal, including Human Resources Management, Journal of Business Ethics or The Service Industries Journal. She lectures on strategic management and management of environmental certifications.

Raquel Sánchez-Fernández is an Associate Professor of Marketing, Ph.D., University of Almeria, International Campus of Excellence in Agrifood (CeiA3), Spain. Her research covers a wide variety of topics in marketing and consumer, specially focus on issues related to perceived value and relationship marketing. She is author of several articles in scientific national and international business journals, including International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management or International Marketing Review. She lectures on marketing management, consumer behavior and tourism marketing.

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