Understanding crowding perceptions and their impact on place experience: Insights from a mixed-methods study

The existing research on the impact of crowding on visitors' experiences has yielded mixed results, mainly due to inadequate conceptualization and measurement of the phenomenon. To address this issue, we adopted a mixed-methods approach. We first conducted a qualitative study (Study 1, focus group based) to understand (i) how consumers perceive crowding at leisure places, (ii) the sources of crowding (spatial or social), and (iii) its effects on their experiences and future behaviors. For Study 2 we collected quantitative data through a survey (n = 537 respondents) to estimate the association between objective and subjective measures of crowding, the relative contribution of human and spatial crowding to visitors' overall crowding perceptions and its impact on satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The results indicated there is a weak association between objective and perceived human crowding, which makes subjective measures more appropriate for assessing crowdedness. A formative two-dimensional (human and spatial) conceptualization of crowding more adequately captures visitors' perceptions. The influence of each dimension is context-dependent, such that human crowding is more problematic for visitors to monuments, while cruise ship tourists are less tolerant of spatial crowding. The findings also revealed that crowding negatively affects visitors' satisfaction, while its impact on behavioral intentions is mostly nonsignificant for cruise ship tourists.