From Moral Shock to Ethical Scrutiny: Unpacking the Temporal and Intra-Individual Dynamics of Dark Tourism Experience

Dark tourism visits to atrocity memorials produce simultaneous distress and profound meaning, yet mediating psychological mechanisms remain inadequately theorized. This study introduces ethical scrutiny—a temporally and functionally delimited specification of post-visit moral-evaluative cognition, not a wholly independent construct—within an integrated framework of Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Emotion Regulation Theory, and Moral Psychology. A three-wave longitudinal design ( N  = 385) at Auschwitz-Birkenau employed Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling and Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model. Moral reflection prospectively predicted ethical scrutiny (β = .350), enhancing cognitive fulfillment alongside emotional engagement. Both educational and voyeuristic motivations activated cognitive reappraisal as adaptive regulatory pathways; the ethical ambiguity of voyeuristic motivation at this site is explicitly preserved and unresolved by these data. Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model revealed 55% to 63% of variance reflecting stable between-person dispositions; within-person discomfort suppressed recommendation intention. All findings are site-conditioned; cross-spectrum generalizability requires independent empirical demonstration.