A chronological review on perceptions of crowding in tourism and recreation

This study presents a chronological review of methodological and empirical issues of the perceived crowding literature in the contexts of tourism and recreation. A content analysis was performed on 178 empirical articles gathered from online databases and published during the period of 2000-2019. The findings are presented in three sections - specifically, research scope, research methodology, and empirical issues consisting of antecedents and consequences of perceived crowding. The integrative review demonstrates that perceived crowding research is methodologically characterized by (1) a dominance of single-country setting studies mostly sampling visitors as opposed to other units of analysis and (2) an overwhelming number of quantitative studies with high response rates but a lack of sampling method reporting. Regarding the empirical issues, personal factors, external factors, and site-related factors are highly examined as antecedents of perceived crowding. In terms of crowding consequences, satisfaction-related consequences, and behavioural and affective responses constitute the main consequences discussed in the literature. The two substantial contributions of this article to the existing literature are as follows: (a) filling the gap in the relevant body of research with a comprehensive review of empirical articles on the subject and (b) providing theoretical and methodological guidelines for future research.