Tetsuya Aikoh

Understanding how visitors respond to crowding is crucial for ensuring the success, safety, and overall enjoyment of large-scale exhibitions. However, despite its significance, limited research has explored this issue. To address this gap, we conducted a questionnaire survey in 2022 and 2023 for visitors to exhibitions held at the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center. Our research aims to explore the level of consistency between perceived and actual crowding, levels of discomfort in crowded situations, tolerance levels for crowding, and behaviors to avoid crowded situations. The results revealed significant changes in visitor perceptions across the two-year period. Notably, the acceptable crowd density in 2023 increased by 13% compared to 2022. This change in level of tolerance for crowding might have been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and other contextual factors that altered visitors’ perceptions toward crowding. Interestingly, despite these perceptual changes, behaviors to avoid crowded situations remained consistent across both years. The most common response was that no special action was taken to avoid crowded situations. These findings underscore that perceptions and behaviors related to crowding in the context of large-scale exhibitions are not uniform. Our findings offer several implications and insights for crowd management, which event organizers can use to devise strategies aimed at enhancing visitors’ experiences and effectively managing crowding in large-scale exhibitions.

In some natural parks, introducing a shuttle bus system as an alternative to private cars can help reduce congestion and protect nature. This study examines the pilot program to effectively induce visitors to switch to the shuttle bus, while examining the visitors’ understanding of the expansion of the restricted vehicle section in Shiretoko National Park—a World Natural Heritage site known for its rich natural resources, especially as a high-density habitat for brown bears. There are concerns about conflicts between visitors and brown bears that appear along roads. Visitor restrictions, such as limited access to transportation, limit the use of a place and alter the behavior and experience. Therefore, careful consideration is needed before introducing visitor restrictions. The results of our questionnaire survey of visitors indicated that most favored the expansion of the shuttle bus section. The choice experiment revealed that the guides on the bus and an optional experience encouraged visitors to switch to the shuttle buses. Nonetheless, awareness of the pilot program was low, and some visitors preferred their cars, indicating the need for further promotion of awareness and understanding of these new measures.