“Nudging” Crowds: When It Works, When It Doesn’t and Why

In recent years, there has been as substantial technological improvement in pedestrian detection and numerical modeling. Yet, crowd steering is still based on constructional changes or on-site guidance with little automation. In this work, we investigate the possibility of using environmental stimuli to modify (collective) behavior or people. Three different scenarios are considered where steering method, interaction time (with the surrounding environment) and crowd density are changed. Results show that simple changes in land- and soundscape are not sufficient to modify human route choice in a familiar environment such when entering an office building. However, using supervised experiments we showed that when crowd density is sufficiently high, interaction time login enough and the context “neutral”, it is possible to “nudge” people into a more efficient motion. The outcomes of this work may help in the development of steering systems to be used in sparse crowds with minimal constructional intervention at the scope to reduce congestion and delay the occurrence of dangerous situations.