“Brasil, decime qué se siente”: a study of agglomeration in a stadium in the World Cup

Abstract

This study investigates visitor reactions to the human and spatial agglomeration of World Cup stadiums, relating the variable of crowding perception to emotions and consumer’s satisfaction. The largest world event based on a single sport, the Cup moves millions of tourists during the period of its accomplishment. Constantly explored in previous research, the perception of crowding presents a gap in the tangent to relationships established in entertainment environments. The quantitative research, based on the Machleit, Kellaris and Eroglu (1994) scale, presented 270 cases analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling method. The results indicate that the crowding of people in football stadiums during the World Cup triggers positive emotions in the consumer, contrary to most previous studies conducted in other types of environments. The perception of spatial crowding, in turn, maintained the negative character mostly attested by the literature, relating negatively to positive emotions. There was evidence that perception of human crowding influences more intensely on satisfaction than the perception of space crowding.