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An Exploratory Analysis of Activity Participation and Travel Patterns of Pilgrims in the World’s Largest Mass Religious Gathering: A Case Study of Kumbh Mela Ujjain, India

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Abstract

Over the last decade, activity-based travel demand modeling has proved to be a reliable tool for urban travel demand analysis. This paper aims to understand pilgrims’ travel behavior in a mass religious gathering using the activity-based approach. The focus here is the Kumbh Mela event of 2016 (22nd April to 21st May) held at Ujjain, India, considered the world’s largest human gathering and attracts pilgrims worldwide. Thus, the study’s focus is to present a detailed exploratory analysis of activity participation (episode frequency and time allocation to various activities) and activity-travel patterns (trip chain patterns) of pilgrims based on primary data collected using an activity-travel questionnaire survey. The results suggest that pilgrims follow intricate trip chain patterns while performing primary activities, such as offering prayer, holy dip, and visiting ghat, and then carrying out secondary activities, including recreation and discretionary activities. Primary and secondary activities in a religious context differ significantly from the conventional activity-based study in the transportation domain. The undertaken research is the first of its kind, and results provide insights on the understanding of crowd dynamics in mass religious gatherings at a macroscopic level.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported in this paper is part of the project titled “The Kumbh Mela Experiment: Measuring and Understanding the Dynamics of Mankind’s largest crowd,” funded by the Ministry of Electronics and IT Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India (MITO-0105), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO (Project No. 629.002.202). The authors also express their gratitude towards Kumbh Mela administration and government of Madhya Pradesh, India for providing constant support and official permissions to carry out research work and establish an Indo-Dutch collaboration research camp at Kumbh Mela 2016. The authors wish to acknowledge that previously this paper was presented as a poster titled, An exploratory analysis of activity participation and travel patterns of pilgrims in the worl’s largest mass religious gathering: A case study of Kumbh Mela Ujjain, India, at the Transportation Research Board 2020 Annual Meeting.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, Karnataka, 560012, India

    Ashish Verma

  2. Ramaiah Institute of Management, Bangalore, Karnataka, 560012, India

    Meghna Verma

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka, 560012, India

    Vivek Yadav & Punyabeet Sarangi

  4. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas New Delhi, Delhi, 110016, India

    M. Manoj

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  1. Ashish Verma
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  2. Meghna Verma
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  4. Punyabeet Sarangi
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  5. M. Manoj
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Contributions

The authors confirm their contribution to the article as follows. AV and MV: conceptualization, data collection, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition; VY and PS: conceptualization, data curation, model building, and interpretation, and article writing; MM: supervision, article writing, reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Ashish Verma.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table A1.

Table A1 Cross classification table of socio demographics and activity participation(N = 2548)
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Verma, A., Verma, M., Yadav, V. et al. An Exploratory Analysis of Activity Participation and Travel Patterns of Pilgrims in the World’s Largest Mass Religious Gathering: A Case Study of Kumbh Mela Ujjain, India. Transp. in Dev. Econ. 7, 27 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40890-021-00137-0

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