Dark-light spectrum was used to express the depth of dark experience in dark tourism. Based on embodied cognition theory, this paper examined the visual expression of tourists' dark tourism experience. Five consecutive studies were conducted including analysis of tourists' photos in online reviews of 53 dark tourism destinations worldwide, charcoal pencil painting tasks of selected dark tourism sites in lab experiments, and field experiment. Results showed that tourists with darker experience tend to use deeper visual darkness to express their feelings, in the forms of painting and photographs, even when the cognitive process (i.e., expression in the form of words) is omitted. This psychological mechanism explains the scientific principle behind dark tourism spectrum. Our research suggests a new way of interpretation of tourist image data (e.g., photos) and sheds light for effective management of tourist experience.

暗光谱用于表达黑暗旅游中黑暗体验的深度。基于具身认知理论，本文考察了游客黑暗旅游体验的视觉表达。连续进行了五项研究，包括分析全球 53 个黑暗旅游目的地在线评论中的游客照片、实验室实验中选定的黑暗旅游景点的炭笔绘画任务和实地实验。结果表明，体验较暗的游客倾向于使用更深的视觉黑暗来表达他们的感受，以绘画和照片的形式，即使忽略了认知过程（即以文字的形式表达）。这种心理机制解释了黑暗旅游光谱背后的科学原理。