Echoes of the past: The quality of life impact on visitors to military memorials

Military memorials serve as places of remembrance for those who served their country. Three such memorials found in South Africa are 61 Mechanized Battalion Memorial Needle, located at the South African Military Museum in Saxonworld Johannesburg, the South African Air Force Memorial, located in Valhalla Pretoria, and the Gunners National Memorial found in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The memorials serve as places of remembrance for soldiers who died serving in either the Union Defence Force (1912-1957) of South Africa, South African Defence Force (1957-1994), or the South African National Defence Force (1994-present). The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between travel motives, life domains and quality of life of visitors attending a military memorial. Permission was granted by the administrators of relevant military social media sites to place a call for participation among the members of the site. The call to participate in the research requested that members who visited the memorials during the previous year to participate in this research. A self-administrated online questionnaire was used by participants which they completed anonymously. Data from 237 (N) fullycompleted questionnaires were captured and analysed using Mplus. The data gathered provided support for a structural equation model, which produced acceptable overall goodness-of-fit statistics. The model indicates that travel motives, life domains positive affect, and life domains overall have a direct linear relationship with quality of life of visitors attending a military memorial. Recommendations will be made from the study's findings to the memorial custodians with the aim of maximising visitors’ quality of life. This research adds to the literature on tourism and quality of life, and may help military memorial custodians to understand visitor pull better.