The effects of sounds and food odour on crowd behaviours in urban public open spaces

Abstract

Few studies have investigated the integrated effects of sound and odour on people with the purpose of improving the use of urban spaces. Therefore, this study aimed to provide further insight into such effects from the perspective of crowd behaviour. A covert behavioural observation experiment was conducted in a typical urban commercial pedestrian street, using the smell of a bakery as the odour source, while reproducing typical urban sound sources of music and fan sound (along with a condition where no sound was played) with and without odour. The present results show that for crowd path, in the no-odour condition, playing music significantly attracted the crowd, while fan sound tended to make the crowd path farther away from the sensory sources. With the bakery odour, individuals approached the sensory sources closer when playing the sound, whether it was music or fan sound. With regard to crowd speed, music significantly reduced it and the greater the proximity to the sound source, the slower the crowd speed. Fan sound increased the crowd speed, which was significantly higher in the presence rather than absence of bakery odour, and the average speed decreased gradually as proximity to the sensory sources increased. Finally, with regard to the duration time of the crowd, it increased with music and decreased with fan sound. The bakery odour also significantly increased the duration time. However, the interaction effect between sound and odour on crowd speed and duration time was not significant.