Curiosity in calamity: How personal schadenfreude shapes disaster-tourism intentions

Abstract

Tourism to sites of recent disaster, a form of dark tourism has raised questions about whether visitors are driven by typical travel motivations or by morbid impulses. This study examines how conventional tourist motives and the personality trait of benign schadenfreude (pleasure at others’ misfortune) jointly influence people’s intentions to visit a recent disaster site. By surveying 438 tourists to Kerala, four months after the July 2024 Wayanad landslides, we measured four common travel motives (novelty seeking, fun/entertainment, knowledge/learning, and relationship bonding) alongside a benign schadenfreude scale and visit intention. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed for modeling. The model explained 58.80 percent of the variance in visit intention. Three motives viz., novelty, knowledge, and relationship had significant positive associations with intention, whereas the fun motive showed a negative effect. Schadenfreude emerged as the strongest predictor of disaster-site visit intention. Moreover, schadenfreude significantly moderated the influence of novelty seeking: respondents high in schadenfreude exhibited especially strong curiosity-driven intent to visit. These findings suggest that interest in post-disaster tourism often stems from ordinary travel drivers (curiosity, learning, social bonding), but a disposition to enjoy others’ misfortune can intensify the appeal when novel experiences are involved. The research highlights the need for ethical considerations to be followed by the destination managers and authorities in managing dark tourism destinations. Key limitations include the use of a cross-sectional data, region-specific sample and the focus on benign dimension (versus malicious) of schadenfreude. Future research should validate these results in other cultural and disaster contexts, establish causal relationships, and examine additional personal factors as well as dimensions of schadenfreude.