Visitors’ perception on 7 th august memorial park as a dark tourism site in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The study aimed at assessing visitor perception of the 7 th August Memorial park in Nairobi as a dark tourism site in Kenya. The 7 th August memorial park which is an historical human tragedy and terrorism ruin where over 300 human lives were lost was selected as the research subject. The objectives of the study was i) to establish the visitors’ knowledge on the perception of 7 th August memorial park as a dark tourism site ii) to establish the visitors’ behaviour on the perception of 7 th August memorial park iii) to determine the visitors’ value on 7 th August memorial park as a dark tourism site and iv) to establish the visitors’ satisfaction on 7 th August memorial park being the dark tourism site attraction. A total of 217 respondents to the 7 th memorial park were selected and interviewed through a survey questionnaire from the target population of 1200 respondents. The objectives of the study were to determine the visitors’ knowledge of dark tourism, establish visitors’ behaviour while at the 7th Memorial park, determine the visitors’ value perception of the memorial park and establish visitors’ satisfaction of the 7 th August memorial park as a dark tourism site in Kenya. The study adopted postmodernism theory while the study data was collected using a questionnaire comprising of both closed and open ended questions. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics to generate means, percentages and frequencies, while inferential statistics including Chi-square test and correlations were used on selected variables. Findings revealed that a majority (87.6%) of the visitors to the 7 th Memorial park had prior information about the site, while 24% had some knowledge on dark tourism. Further findings indicate that 54.8% of 7 th Memorial park visitors were familiar with dark tourism concepts while 77.2% of the visitors empathized with memorial park victims. Chi-square (χ2) analysis established that there was a strong association between visitor prior knowledge and behaviours (χ2 =2.419, df=8, p>0.05) and there was no association between visitor prior knowledge and visitor perception value of the 7 th Memorial park as a dark tourism site (χ2 = 4.651, df=17, p<0.05). Spearman correlation revealed a strong positive relationship between visitor behaviours and value from the 7 th August memorial park(r= 0.666). Although dark tourism is not very popular in Kenya, it was observed that some visitors to the site felt sorry to the families who lost their loved ones while others noted of the memorial park to have provided a moment of reflection and introspection. Though dark tourism is a reflection of the past sad moments, it is recommended that historical information on such calamities and tragedies be made available for visitors to gain knowledge of dark tourism and for such information to be used in the promotion of dark tourism.