Measuring reactions to congestion in the digital era

Here is a summary thesis synopsis in point form for someone to understand this paper:

Overall Thesis/Main Argument:

This study introduces a novel, objective, real-time, multi-method framework to assess visitors' emotional and visual responses to various conditions of density and congestion outside the laboratory, addressing a gap in tourism research that often overlooks how tourists experience overcrowding and primarily uses subjective self-report tools.
It proposes that the developed methodology, which integrates spatiotemporal tracking, wearable physiological sensors, and mobile eye-tracking, can be used not only to measure emotional arousal but also objectively measure density and congestion itself, specifically through the "tourist gaze".

Synopsis of the Paper's Approach and Key Findings:

Problem Addressed: Cities are experiencing accelerated growth in visitor numbers leading to overcrowding (overtourism), with academic discourse primarily focusing on environmental damage and resident dissatisfaction, often overlooking the tourist's subjective experience. When tourist experience is examined, it's typically via subjective self-reports, which have struggled to confirm links between perceived crowding and satisfaction.
Methodological Innovation:
- The study bridges a methodological gap by combining physiological (electrodermal activity for emotional arousal) and objective (mobile eye-tracking for visual attention and density measures) technologies with spatiotemporal tracking (GPS).
- This approach captures unconscious emotional responses in real-time and provides a "human's-eye perspective" or first-person view of density, unlike traditional bird's-eye or vertical views.
- It introduces two direct gaze-based metrics for density/congestion: "People Count" (Gaze-based Density), which counts human objects in a frame, and "People Area" (Gaze-based Proximity), which calculates the relative area taken up by human objects.
- It also uses two indirect density metrics: "Velocity" (walking speed) and "Gaze Attention" (rate of gaze focus on people).
Experimental Design:
- A pilot experiment was conducted in a real-world urban environment (Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem) with 25 local student participants (due to COVID-19 travel restrictions), who performed repeated walking tasks under varying density conditions (morning off-peak vs. afternoon peak hours).
Key Findings:
- High visitor numbers (density) were found to affect visitors' emotional states and visual attention.
- There was a moderate positive correlation between direct density measures (People Count and People Area) and objective emotional arousal (specifically Average Peak Amplitude), partially confirming hypotheses H1, H2, and H4. People Count showed a stronger link than People Area in predicting Peak Amplitude.
- Direct density measures were strong predictors of indirect density measures:
  - A strong negative correlation was found between direct measures (People Count, People Area) and Velocity (walking speed), meaning more people led to slower walking (H5, H6).
  - A very strong positive correlation was found between direct measures and Gaze Attention on people, meaning more people led to increased gaze focus on them (H7, H8).
- However, indirect density measures did not consistently predict objective emotional arousal:
  - Velocity showed no linear connection with emotional arousal (H9, H10 rejected), indicating its difficulty as a reliable metric for pedestrian crowding in this context.
  - Gaze Attention on people showed only a moderate positive correlation with Average Peak Amplitude (H12 confirmed, H11 rejected).
- The study identified visual coping mechanisms, where visitors unconsciously diverted their gaze from disturbing human targets to structural, consumer, or external targets in crowded conditions.
- A new classification of overcrowding from the visitor's perspective was proposed, based on varying levels of People Count and People Area, identifying states of "no overcrowding," "mild overcrowding," and "overcrowding".
Contributions and Implications:
- The methodology allows for continuous, precise, and objective measurement of density and emotional responses from the visitor's perspective, enhancing objectivity and complementing traditional subjective measures.
- It advances tourism theory by validating the "visitor as sensor" concept and proposing gaze as a dynamic metric for density and congestion.
- Provides practical tools for tourism destination managers and urban planners to manage visitor flows, reduce overcrowding, and enhance visitor satisfaction and experience by understanding spatial, visual, and emotional behavior, both conscious and unconscious.
- Offers insights for designing public spaces to improve tourist experience and resident life quality.
Limitations:
- Small sample size of local participants, not representative of general tourist populations.
- GPS limitations in built environments (like light-roofed markets).
- The study primarily focused on the feasibility of the methodology and did not include a comparative analysis between objective and subjective metrics.
- Raises ethical considerations regarding participant privacy due to tracking devices.