Experiential consequences of crowding, crowding-sourced emotional reactions, and coping strategies for crowding: A scale development study with theme park visitors

Along with the rapid growth of world population and tremendous improvement in transportation and communication technologies, the number of people engaging in international tourism activities has been increasing continuosly. As a result of rise in tourist flow to popular destinations in recent years, the problem of overcrowding came to the front stage seeking response by both tourism professionals and academics. Therefore, it is highly significant to understand the potential effects of crowding on tourist experience, visitors' responses to crowding and their coping strategies with a holistic view in terms of both maintaining sustainable destinations and ensuring the quality of tourist experience. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop the scales of experiential consequences of crowding, crowding-sourced emotional reactions, and coping strategies for crowding in the context of theme park visits with a mixed-method approach. As the first step of data collection process, face-to-face in-depth interviews incorporated with photo-elicitation method were conducted with 35 respondents who visited theme parks located in Florida state of the United States. In accordance with the findings revealed from content analysis of in-depth interviews, first item pools were formed. After the scale items were judged and purified by ten experts, a pilot study was conducted with 165 theme park visitors. In line with the results of exploratory factor and reliability analyses, final questionnaire form consisting all items of three scales was created and tested. In the final phase of data collection, 246 responses were gathered from individuals who visited theme parks located in Florida during the past 18 months and subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, reliability, correlation and multiple regression analyses. In the scope of this study, experiential consequences of crowding, crowding-sourced emotional reactions and coping strategies for crowding scales were developed and their convergent, discriminant, predictive validity and reliability were supported. The results demonstrated that experiential consequences of crowding include experience degradation, safety threats, social conflicts and mobility constraints. The study also supported that overcrowding situation in the context of theme parks evokes the feelings of constraint, agitation, tiredness, and stress among the visitors. Further, excessive increase in human density leads to the adoption of displacement, cognitive coping, social coping, and proactive coping mechanisms to cope with crowding. Moreover, there is a significant correlation between perceived crowding and all dimensions of three scales developed in the study. Experiential consequences of crowding result in emotional responses and coping strategies for crowding while crowding-sourced emotions lead to the adoption of coping mechanisms in overcrowded theme park settings. Keywords: Overcrowding, Perceived Crowding, Visitor Experience, Emotional Reactions, Coping Strategies, Theme Parks, United States of America