From morbid gaze to lighter shades of dark tourism: changing motivations for visiting memorial sites commemorating the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China

Tourists’ reasons for visiting destinations, places, sites and memorials change over time. In 2013 and 2018, we interviewed a total of 392 Chinese domestic tourists visiting memorial sites built to commemorate the victims of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (in Sichuan Province), which killed over 87,000 people. These memorial sites annually attract hundreds of thousands of visitors. We found that, on the dark tourism spectrum, tourist motivations for visiting changed between 2013 and 2018, from darker, mortality-related reasons towards lighter, learning and leisure-oriented reasons. However, the strongest reasons for visiting related to wanting to commemorate the victims and having a perceived obligation to understand what happened. Items that might be described as morbid gaze were less important. The socially constructed processes of memorialization and remembering enhance the symbolic value of memorials. Normalization and de-emotionalization also occur, but not consistently among and between local people and visitors from further away. Although a shift over time in motivations for visiting is inevitable and understandable, sensitivity and respect remain important for local people. Whether morbid gaze or not, tourist behavior and the mere presence of tourists can result in emotional impacts being wrought upon local people, and can disrupt community healing and resilience.