Visitors’ Perception of Theme Park Crowding and Behavioral Consequences

Abstract

Since tourism is viewed as being a fast-growing industry, researchers are keen to investigate the negative impacts brought by an increasing number of visitors. As one of the derived social impacts, crowding has been proven to have a negative effect on tourists’ visiting experience. Thus, this study aims to understand tourists’ perception of crowding and its subsequent effect on their loyalty. A theme park in China called China Dinosaur Land, located in Jiangsu Province, is selected as the research site and 296 valid questionnaires are collected from the visitors. The results illustrate that psychological states, such as perceived crowding, emotional response, and coping behavior are much more complex than the study initially proposes; therefore, the hypotheses of the study are amended according to the research results.