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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. |
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