This study identifies implications of dark tourism and describes how tourists and destinations, which are principal collateral cores, define what constitutes “dark” travel. The study also examines the dimensions of dark tourism motivation and experience and finds that the former partly affects the latter. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis aimed to examine why tourists approach and engage with disaster sites and how such experiences may affect tourists motivation and emotional reaction. It is the first paper that applies structural equation modelling to dark tourism research. We focus on the causal relationships between dimensions of motivation and experience, and the relationship that the emotional reactions effect on tourist experiences. We find that the curious visitors are likely to engage cognitively by learning about the incident or related issues and tourists' emotional reaction to the “dark” space influence more heavily emotional tourist experiences than cognitive experiences do. •Our study focuses on the motivation–experience relationship and the regulatory function of emotional reaction.•Implications of dark tourism are identified.•Tourists' emotional reactions influence more heavily emotional tourist experiences than cognitive experiences do.•The curious visitors are likely to engage cognitively by learning about the incident or related issues.•Not all tourists visit the dark tourism destination for dark tourism.