Crowoding in Mina based on pilgrims’ perception of safety and comfort in Hajj

Abstract

Crowding perception has been studied in various settings to alleviate the effect of the crowded conditions on participants’ well-being. These include festivals, outdoor recreation, tourism and retail settings. However, very few researches have addressed the crowding perception in religious settings that include a large number of populations such as during the Hajj. More than two million pilgrims perform their Hajj every year. The Hajj process involves staying at the holy site of Mina from four to five days. In Mina, the pilgrims require a peaceful atmosphere to perform their Hajj rituals. A large number of pilgrims and Mina’s spatial constraints led to crowded conditions that affected the pilgrims’ peaceful atmosphere and created serious safety and comfort concerns. It appears that little research consideration has been given to alleviate the impact of the crowded conditions on the pilgrims. Therefore, the research aim is to establish parameters that affect pilgrims’ levels of crowding perception toward enhancing their perception of safety and comfort in Mina during the Hajj. Accordingly, a systematic literature review was employed to develop a conceptual framework that considers the possible influential factors that might affect the pilgrims’ and the effect of their perceived crowding on perceived levels of safety and comfort in Mina. Then, this research used a quantitative research design and data were randomly collected from 1243 pilgrims of seven pilgrim groups representing seven Hajj establishments. The data were analysed using the SPSS and AMOS software. The findings revealed that for all pilgrims, one socio-demographic factor (education), one personal factor (expectation), two social factors (provision of information and activities) and three physical factors (routing strategies, disorientation causes and coding and signage) are observed to have significant impact on the pilgrims’ crowding perception, which significantly affects their levels of perceived safety and comfort in Mina. The findings also indicated that the impact of influential factors on the pilgrims’ crowding perception varies according to their pilgrims’ group. Based on the findings, this research recommended eight parameters that affect the pilgrims’ levels of crowding perception to enhance their levels of perceived safety and comfort in Mina. Furthermore, this thesis suggested some theoretical and practical implications as well as important avenues for future research.