Dark heritage tourism education: effects of information-led versus narrative-led advertising appeals on tourists’ heritage preservation intentions

In dark cultural heritage communication, eliciting empathy does not necessarily translate into preservation actions. Dark cultural heritage is both educational and sensitive: communication needs to reduce audiences’ psychological distance and facilitate understanding and commemoration, while also guarding against the risk of turning traumatic experience into something to be “experienced” and consumed. Drawing on the stimulus organism response (SOR) framework and self-construal theory, this study distinguishes two types of advertising appeals for dark cultural heritage information-led and narrative-led.

Through two experiments that manipulate appeal type, we measure audiences’ emotional arousal and self-construal, and further conceptualize willingness to support heritage preservation at both the verbal and behavioral levels. The findings show that advertising appeal type affects willingness to support heritage preservation via emotional arousal and self-construal, yet the effects are not fully consistent across verbal versus behavioral outcomes. Serial mediation tests further reveal a psychological pathway from emotional engagement through identity positioning to commitment to responsibility.

In addition, the serial mediation effect from emotional arousal to self-construal is context-dependent and varies across individuals, indicating boundary conditions for advertising’s emotional influence: it is pronounced for some contexts or audience groups but limited in others. By linking ethical concerns in heritage communication with evaluations of advertising effectiveness, this study provides actionable empirical evidence for communication design under the tension between audience appeal and educational depth in dark cultural heritage, and offers a mechanism-based explanation for fostering sustainable public support for preservation. School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Xi’an, China College of Economics and Management, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China The authors declare no competing interests.

The study was granted an exemption from ethics review by the Ethics Committee of the College of Economics and Management, Xidian University. The Committee confirmed that formal ethics approval was not required because the study involved an anonymous, minimal-risk online questionnaire administered only to adult participants. No personally identifiable information, sensitive personal data, audio or video recordings, biological samples, data from minors, or data from vulnerable populations were collected.

The study was conducted in accordance with relevant institutional guidelines and applicable regulations. Informed consent was obtained from all participants before they began the online questionnaire. Data were collected between December 14, 2024 and July 4, 2025.

Participants were informed of the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of participation, their right to withdraw at any time, and the anonymous and confidential handling of their responses. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.