Crowds inside out: Understanding crowds from the perspective of individual crowd members' experiences

With the growth of global population, the big cities become increasingly crowded. It is not rare to see large crowds in public transportations and events with masses of visitors, such as music festivals and football matches. The question “How to deal with crowds” is receiving attention, both from academia and practical crowd management.
This thesis aims at contributing to a better understanding of crowds from the perspective of individual crowd members’ experiences, including their well- being, emotional experiences and action tendencies. In addition, we want to understand the emotional contagion effect between groups in crowds. To achieve this, we chose to go into the crowds, get in touch with the crowd members, and try to find out what factors sustain their well-being, how their emotional experiences can be measured in a playful and non-intrusive manner, what they tend to do when they have certain emotions, and how the grouping behavior reflects their experiences.