Rui Costa Lopes

Understanding how and why people participate in crowd events

The participation and collective effervescence in crowd events is a perennial issue in social sciences, however it has scarcely been researched from the point of view of the attendees. This article helps to fill the gap with an exploratory descriptive study based on a sample of 1,553 respondents from 40 countries. The authors analyse seven different types of events and also describe the various participation levels, whether people go there alone or in company, and their reasons for attending. Globally, the results show several specific patterns: (a) the majority of the participants often go to collective events, but different events have different levels of participation; (b) people rarely go alone to collective events, but the company depends on the type of event; (c) although the results show it is not necessary to like the event to trigger participation, people have different reasons for going to different events. The article concludes with a cluster analysis that details the links between attendance, company, and reasons to attend, according to the socio-demographic factors.