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Dark tourism, dark emotions?: Visitors' emotions provoked at Holocaust memorial museum Anne Frank House in Amsterdam
Dalarna University, School of Technology and Business Studies, Tourism Studies.
2016 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the emotional response of visitors during their visit at the dark tourism site, Holocaust memorial museum the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This thesis is based on primary data using quantitative and qualitative research design. In order to collect quantitative data a self-completion questionnaire was administered on-site and a probability sampling method was used in which participants of the questionnaire were selected by a simple random sample sampling technique (Bryman, 2012). Additionally, qualitative data was collected by means of participant observations of two different techniques inside and outside the museum (Bryman, 2012). Both conducted in April 2016. Study findings are drawn from 314 questionnaires measuring emotional response, at four different locations within the memorial museum, leading to a 90% confidence level. Jotted notes of the observed participants were included to find out what triggered the emotional response of visitors. Findings of the measured emotions through the questionnaire as experienced strongest are interest, compassion, admiration and sadness. Additionally, participants who responded to the open question with any additional strong felt emotion, the most frequent mentioned categorized emotions were "spiritual", "inspirational" and "loss of sense". The retrieved observational data show sharing emotions may create a feeling of fellowship with others, individuals fused in a single entity. Besides, participant copy behaviour of the shared emotion was observed of which the emotions ranged from excitement, sadness and a feeling of being lost. Consequently, findings revealed visitors being confronted with death and suffering experience overall positive emotions during their visit. The emotional response investigated at dark tourism sites has just begun and therefore no consistency has been identified with previous results of tourism studies yet. A lack of empirical approaches to identify emotions in a dark tourism context was found. Therefore the data retrieved can be used for future studies. However, there might be a consistency with Fredrickson’s broaden-and-built theory and the undoing hypothesis. Lastly, the findings contribute to previous research identified "emotional involvement" as important motive to visit the Anne Frank House, the specific emotions experienced by the visitors on site could be compared in order to develop marketing campaigns and improve site management to retain and promote the site accordingly.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2016.
Keywords [en]
Holocaust memorial, dark tourism, emotional response, broaden-and-built theory, mixed-methods research
National Category
Human Geography
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-21616OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-21616DiVA, id: diva2:933774
Available from: 2016-06-07 Created: 2016-06-07

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf