The influential factors on Travel Curiosity and Intention to visit a Dark Tourism Site in Bangladesh: Moderating effect of age and objective knowledge

This study examined the significant influencing factors on tourists' visit intention to dark tourism sites based on the Consumer Information Process model. It is hypothesized that tourists' subjective knowledge and media exposure to dark tourism will stimulate tourist curiosity and increase visitation intention. We also examined the moderating role of tourists' objective knowledge of dark tourism sites and age in the effects of subjective knowledge and media exposure on tourist curiosity. The survey was conducted in Dhaka, Bangladesh, using a convenience sampling method, and a total of 261 samples were used for analysis. The results of the analysis using SPSS showed that, first, tourists' subjective knowledge had a significant influ ence on tourism curiosity, but there was no significant relationship between media exposure to dark tourism sites and tourism curiosity. Second, we found that tourism curiosity positively influenced visit intention to dark tourism sites. Third, age was not found to play a significant moderating role in the relationship between subjective knowledge and tourism curiosity, but objective knowledge was found to be a significant moderat ing variable. But, both age and objective knowledge play a significant moderating role between media ex posure and travel curiosity. Therefore, the results of this study can provide meaningful implications for in creasing interest in and visitation to dark tourism destinations.