Promoting the thrills: a study of emotional reactions to advertisements for fright tourism heritage attractions

The paper examines emotions generated in potential visitors through the promotional imagery used in fright tourism, a form of dark heritage tourism. In fright tourism, an unusual combination of human emotions of fun and fear are experienced by tourists through activities such as haunted house visits and ghost tours. A modified model, based on Russell’s [1980. A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178] Circumplex Model of Affect, was developed to measure emotions in fright tourism advertising. The model was constructed with empirical data from the United States and New Zealand. The data were obtained through interviews with business owners of fright tourism attractions, focus groups, and a questionnaire of potential visitors. Findings indicated statistically significant correlations exist between human emotions in different quadrants of the model (positive/pleasant and negative/unpleasant). The findings suggest, contrary to the application of the Circumplex Model in more conventional tourism settings, that fright tourism business’ advertisements induce contradictory emotions. The study challenges current understandings of visitor experiences and contributes to knowledge about how fright tourism heritage experiences may best be promoted.