Social Identity and Depersonalization in Dark Tourist Experience

Abstract

Social identity is part of an individual’s self-concept. A sense of social identity helps meet the demand of people for seeking social identification, alleviate ontological insecurity amongst general public and bring about positive attitudinal and behavioural changes in favour of the corresponding social group. Dark tourism, defined as activities of traveling to places associated with death and tragedy, is a burgeoning and fertile ground to ponder social identities. However, a comprehensive and systemic analysis of how social identities permeate tourist experience is missing. Moreover, empirical research with appropriate theoretical foundations to identify factors contributing to salient social identities is yet to be explored. Drawing upon Multifaceted model of the visitor experience and Self-categorization theory, the current research adopts a socio-psychological approach and aims to address those gaps. This thesis employs three studies reported in three chapters to address three main research questions. In Study 1, the thesis addresses the first research question, i.e., Does social identity exist in the tourist experience at post natural disaster sites? and examines the existence of different social identities in post natural disaster dark tourism context. Study 2 of this thesis approaches the second research question, i.e., How are social identities manifested in the tourist experience at post natural disaster sites? and unpacks visitors’ multi-layered experiences at post natural disaster sites, thereby laying a foundation for exploring the manifestation of social identities. Study 3 expands our understanding of what factors underpin the salience of social identities, answering the third research question, i.e., What triggers the salience of social identities at post natural disaster sites? Data were obtained from four post-disaster sites and semi-structured interviews were conducted in situ, with approximately 200 visitors (n=42 participants in the Beichuan Earthquake Ruins of Sichuan Province, China, n=69 participants in the Quake City (museum) of Christchurch, New Zealand, n=44 participants in Pompeii Excavations of Naples, Italy and n=41 participants in Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Park of Tangshan, China). Thematic and network analysis were performed using NVivo 12 and Gephi 0.9.2 software to depict the category, interaction and direction of themes.\nThis thesis has four major contributions. First, this research verified the existence of social identity and a full spectrum of salient social identity in post natural disaster dark tourism context, moving from a personal, to an intermediate and a superordinate level of social identity. Second, this research outlined social identities, including human identity, national identity and family identity, interweaving with cognitive, emotional, introspective, sensory and relational experience aspects. Third, this research identified various triggers of multilevel social identity, with cognition of identity attributes and external stimuli as fundamental triggers shared by all three social identities. Finally, a framework, synthesizing all above findings, has been proposed for understanding salient multi-levelled social identities in the post natural disaster dark tourism context. This thesis therefore offers an empirical, timely and pragmatic guideline that can be applied by academics and/or practitioners to further deepen our understanding of social identity phenomenon and enhance the meaning-making work at post natural disaster dark tourism settings.