Crowding is one of the most frequently studied phenomena in the outdoor recreation literature, but almost all the research focuses on single populations or settings and individual‐level analysis. The present study uses comparative analysis of aggregate data to explore questions that single studies cannot answer. Data come from more than 17,000 individuals in 35 studies of 59 different settings or activities located throughout the northeast, midwest, and northwest United States and New Zealand. All the studies used the same single‐item measure to assess visitor judgments of crowding. Dividing the nine‐point response scale to reflect the percentage of respondents reporting some degree of crowding produced a single crowding rating for each setting. Crowding scores ranged from 12 to 100%, with a mean of 57% (standard deviation, 22%). The analyses suggest that crowding varies by time, resource availability, accessibility and convenience, and management strategy. Factors that did not affect crowding included the region of the United States in which the study was done, the type of activity studied (consumptive or nonconsumptive), and the methodology used to collect the data (on‐site survey or mailed questionnaire). To extend earlier work we also reassessed efforts to use aggregate crowding ratings to identify areas with potential carrying capacity problems. On the basis of the large number of studies done and our experience with the settings in which they were conducted, we developed five classifications ranging from high use‐high impact areas, which are probably operating well over capacity, to low use‐low impact areas, where management or natural factors actively limit use to provide low‐density experiences. Because of the simplicity of this scale and its usefulness for comparative analysis, we urge investigators to use it in other studies so that the database can be expanded.
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