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This study aims to explore the good crowding effect among Indian domestic travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the city destination. This study uses the framework of social motivation theory to achieve the objective.

This study adopted a qualitative research design by taking the case of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents, and themes were drawn manually.

The analysis found four themes that create a good crowding effect among domestic tourists, namely, convenience and price; familiarity and place attachment; social affiliation; and safety. The themes indicated that despite the pandemic, and constant occurrences of new variants, Indian domestic tourists’ on-site attitude towards crowding was favourable.

Firstly, the good crowding effect during the pandemic could have been better understood using empirical data. Secondly, the results cannot be generalized, specifically for developed economies.

This study offers practical implications to destination managers and local administrative bodies for whom achieving sustainability in urban tourism has always been concerning. These include developing infrastructural facilities, encouraging cultural activities in city centres and improving the perception of safety to sustain the good crowding effect.

The affective dimension involved in making a travelling decision played a significant role in the post-pandemic phase. While suppliers needed survival, tourists needed social affiliation and escape from the mandated home isolation due to multiple phases of COVID-19 lockdown in India. This study adds value to society by emphasising that the need for social affiliation among travellers remains intact, and the tourism industry should embrace this transformation.

While most of the pandemic-related studies criticised crowd and tourists’ crowd averting behaviour, this study reported that the good crowding effect could also be an outcome owing to different factors. Therefore, this study offers distinctive nuance of tourists’ behaviour in the post-COVID-19 phase, allowing destination managers and tourism stakeholders to re-think their strategies.

This chapter focuses on the results of laboratory experiments that reveal how social preferences help regulate behavior to overcome social dilemmas. It argues that this evidence provides empirical support for the Austrian argument that social rules (as well as the institution of the market) are an important part of how societies respond to the knowledge problem. However, it also argues that the specific laboratory results regarding the “crowding out” of social preferences and the redistributive character of social preferences when outcomes are influenced by luck provide challenges to Austrian economics. In response, Austrian economics would seem to need to develop some more expanded notion of what matters in human life beyond the exercise of freedom and so extend the list of rules or institutions that require defence beyond those of the market and the rule of law.

Entertainment is now the largest trend in retailing and urban redevelopment, and is credited with revitalizing many downtowns. Consequently, many other cities are attempting to replicate this success by developing pedestrian‐oriented entertainment districts consisting of movie theaters, nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and retail shopping. This paper summarizes the results of 30 police‐manager interviews and a nationwide survey used to identify entertainment‐district features that create problems and demands for police resources, and effective strategies and tactics for policing entertainment districts. The most effective policing is done at the district planning and design stage by engineering out features that cause problems. Good entertainment‐district policing then requires continuous training and education of business managers and private security personnel. Finally, night‐time district patrol requires a multi‐prong effort to pre‐empt problems and assure public safety.

Discount grocery stores (DGSs) are attractive food supply chain (FSC) channels because many cost-conscious Indians use them for monthly needs. Despite capacity, DGSs must address customer concerns about store crowd densities and improve their COVID-19 preparedness. The purpose of this study is to learn how retail operations strategies can improve customer experience and how stores can benefit.

The study looked at a case study where retail operations are run more efficiently, and the customer experience is enhanced by standardizing and customizing customer transactions. The potential benefits that customers and retailers might anticipate are then statistically verified. Next, the potential benefits were examined to determine which ones from customers’ and retailers’ views should be prioritized to increase satisfaction.

The case situation analysis in the study demonstrates how DGSs can improve their retail operations to reduce customer wait times and provide greater convenience. The study also provides practitioners with potential benefits to pursue from the perspectives of retailers, customers and both retailers and customers.

This study requires many past transactions and can be considered an extension of the current study, so it does not capture floor space and capacity improvements.

This research can help FSC retailers compete with upstream supply chain partners and customers in omnichannel retailing. By improving DGS retailer capacity and customer experience, this study can benefit all FSC stakeholders.

Although there are numerous potential benefits that practitioners can pursue, the current study suggests that practitioners focus on those that can improve retailer and customer satisfaction.

An emerging management trend is to use the “wisdom of the crowd” to make decisions traditionally made by the top management alone. Research on this phenomenon has focused mainly on the capacity of crowds to generate ideas, but much less is known about a crowd’s capacity to select ideas. To study crowd-based idea selection in firms, this chapter develops a mathematical model of a crowd that makes decisions by majority voting. The model takes into account contingencies that are of particular importance to firms, namely: the size of the population from which the crowd is drawn, the distribution of accuracy among members of the population, and the firm’s ability to recruit the population’s most accurate individuals. The results show that: (1) under relatively common conditions, increasing the size of the crowd may actually reduce performance; (2) near-optimal performance can usually be achieved by a much smaller crowd than the one required to achieve optimal performance; (3) determining the best crowd size depends critically on the firm’s ability to recruit “accurate” individuals; and (4) good performance does not require large crowds unless all population members exhibit low levels of accuracy.

The purpose of this paper is to link crowdsourcing, operations management (OM) and project management (PM). The study demonstrates how crowdsourcing as an open innovation mechanism is operationalised within a complex PM context. Specifically, the study seeks to understand how crowdsourcing as a novel form of OM improves key outcomes.

The authors conducted exploratory research involving five pure-play crowdsourcing firms based in the USA and Australia.

The findings indicate that the firms practise a form of crowdsourcing that allows flexible, efficient and low risk operations and links to contemporary notions of PM such as projectification and project society. The crowd can be used in a new manner to boost success factors tied to PM through open innovation and operational novelty. In terms of OM, crowdsourcing offers flexibility, speed, dynamism and scalability to project processes.

This research is based on five case studies. Further fine-grained, longitudinal research is required to fully understand this phenomenon in a wider range of contexts.

The paper contributes to practices tied to open innovation and provides guidance on how organisations might use large crowds to enhance PM success.

The study represents early scholarship on crowdsourcing and project operations. It makes three contributions. First, the authors introduce a new theoretical framework linking PM and novel aspects of crowdsourcing to extend understandings of projectification, as well as open innovation frameworks. Second, the authors showcase the flexibility and fluidity of the crowdsourcing project process. Third, the authors examine crowdsourcing operations in terms of size, efficiency and scalability which results in timely and efficient output due to innovative technology, along with the element of trust among stakeholders.

This paper uses recent developments in crowd psychology as the basis for developing new guidelines for public order policing. Argues that the classical view of all crowd members as being inherently irrational and suggestible, and therefore potentially violent, is both wrong and potentially dangerous. It can lead to policing strategies that respond to the violence of some in the crowd by clamping down on all members, and therefore lead all members to perceive the police as hostile and illegitimate. In such conditions, even those who were initially opposed to violence may come to side with more conflictual crowd members and hence contribute to an escalation in the level and scope of collective conflict. This paper argues that police officers need to concentrate on understanding the collective identities, priorities and intentions of different groups in the crowd and give the same priority to facilitating the lawful intentions of some groups as to controlling the unlawful intentions of others.

The aim of this paper is to define a framework for public information services in the twenty‐first century, as a means to address some arguments that are put forward in the debate on the obsoleteness of public information services in the age of the internet.

The paper discusses theoretical concepts on the function of information in modern democracy, followed by analysis of two foremost models of seeking knowledge, “the wisdom of crowds” and “expertise”, the different kinds of questions both forms apply to, the kind of knowledge the different models result in, and the application of the findings from that analysis in the information services environment.

The function of information in a modern democracy still applies today. Information is a means to allow citizens to make informed decisions in the democratic process. The debate on the proper way to provide functional information services in modern democracy is roughly divided between two “schools of thought”. One of them puts the model of “the wisdom of crowds” forward, and sees information technology as the final answer to all questions. The other relies on expertise, which is paramount in classic information services. The conclusion of this paper is that, where not all (research) questions yield to knowledge derived from the wisdom of crowds, there is a true need for information services that specialize in providing information produced by experts. As no other party provides that, public information services should commit themselves to playing a central role in society in providing expert information.

The main value of the paper is comprehensive analysis of the widespread claim that free information on the internet is the end to all means, providing all knowledge at the fingertips. It provides arguments to put forward in debates on the value of public information services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which advocates of crowdsourcing reconfigure the classical sociological treatment of the crowd.

The approach taken conceives of the semantics of crowd theorizing in three phases, each of which makes sense of the power dynamics between the elite and the crowd. In phases one and two, the crowd is conceptualized as a problem generator; in phase three, the crowd is depicted as a problem solver and innovator.

This paper provides a critical look at phase three crowd theorizing. It explores how, by ignoring the disruptive power dynamic, crowdsourcing generates a credible image of the crowd as an innovator and problem solver. The work concludes with a discussion of the implications of phase three crowd theorizing for researchers in sociology.

Advocates of the wisdom of crowds, if interested in the sociological implications of their position, must attend to both the disruptive and costly implications of third phase crowd theorizing.

This paper maps the crowdsourcing process and places it in context. It argues that the distance between the classical social scientific treatment of the crowd is not nearly as great as crowdsourcing advocates would have one believe. Nevertheless, phase three crowd theorizing opens up sociologically relevant questions regarding the future portrayal of collective intelligence as a form of virtual property.

This study aims to review the literature on sharing economy logistics and crowd logistics to answer the three following questions: How is the literature on sharing economy logistics structured? What are the main trends in sharing economy logistics and crowd logistics? What are the future research options?

Bibliometric analysis is used to evaluate 85 articles published over the past 12 years; it identifies the top academic journals, authors and research topics contributing to the field.

The sharing economy logistics and crowd logistics literature is structured around several disciplines and highlights that some are more scientifically advanced than others in their subject definitions, designs, modelling and innovative solutions. The main trends are organized around three clusters: Cluster 1 refers to the optimal allocation of costs, prices, distribution and supplier relationships; Cluster 2 corresponds to business related crowdsourcing and international industry practices; and Cluster 3 includes the impact of transport on last-mile delivery, crowd shipping and the environment.

The study is based on data from peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences. A broader overview could include other data sources such as books, book chapters, working papers, etc.

Future research directions are discussed in the context of the evolution from crowd logistics to crowd intelligence, and the complexities of crowd logistics such as understanding how the social crowd can be integrated into the logistics process. Our results are part of the crowd science and engineering concept and provide some answers about crowd cyber-system questions regarding crowd intelligence in logistic sector.