Abstract

Little is known about crowding perception on events and the link with objective visitor counts. This research aims to fill this gap by collecting WiFi sensor counts and comparing them with perception ratings of visitors on Europe’s largest outdoor urban festival: the Ghent festivities. During 48 hours visitors were asked to rate the human crowding, spatial crowding and pleasure on three locations within the festivities zone. The results show that spatial crowding perception is a better indicator for visitor counts than human crowding perception, which highlights the influence of the environment on crowding perception. On two locations a pleasure drop occurred each night, which could not be linked to the visitor counts, but it could be linked to people’s perception of crowding by defining ‘the rule of three’. In a last step, two datasets on visitor safety were included in the analysis, i.e., number of police interventions and first aid visits, resulting in location-specific recommendations for crowd managers and police forces. This research demonstrates both the need for and potential of sensing what lives within a crowd. By doing so, it makes a plea to evolve from ‘the madness of the crowd’ to ‘the wisdom of the crowd’.