Chernobyl

Abstract

Chernobyl is a very special case among the dark tourism destinations due to the combined technogenic and historical issues, drastic damages to the local nature and remaining elements of the potential danger to visitors in the exclusion zone. Because of this complexity, motivations to visit this destination deserve a thorough investigation from academic and managerial perspectives, as after the HBO miniseries launch in 2019 the interest of travellers keep on increasing. This study concentrates on analysis of internal (push) motivations of young travellers who were born after the event, but live in the distance of 500-700 km from Chernobyl and therefore are aware about it from their families and from public sources. Data is collected in Lithuania, where the additional awareness of Chernobyl was generated by HBO, filming most of the miniseries scenes in there. The analysis includes four types of motivations that appear to have very different influence on visiting intentions among male and female respondents. Female respondents seem to be driven by novelty-seeking and escape motivations; male by ego-enhancement and prestige. This adds to the academic knowledge on the dark tourism motivations and continues discussion regarding the gender-linked differences in tourist motivations. Having this explored, the study raises additional questions and outlines directions for future research.