European citizens’ attitude towards security in mass gatherings events

European citizens’ attitude towards security in mass gatherings events

By Alessia GolfettiDeep Blue.
The events in Europe in recent years have made security and risk perception a topic with high interest.

Citizens’ risk perception across the 28 EU member states has been surveyed by different Special Eurobarometer public opinion surveys (for more information read the post on “How citizens in Europe perceive risk related to security: review of Special Eurobarometer reports”).

Enabling security as societal value is a guiding principle of the research carried out in LETSCROWD. A shift is needed from a vision of security as “guarantee of public order” to a perspective of “construction of security”. According to the last one, security is built and shared, and each stakeholder and citizen contributes to its maintenance. Thus, security can be seen under a bottom-up perspective, where feelings and participation of citizens and of involved practitioners is of fundamental importance to guide and influence decision makers in establishing policies, investments and implement proper prevention and mitigation measures. That is why the LETSCROWD project launched a survey to investigate the perception of security with respect to a new domain not yet explored at EU level: the mass gathering events.

The survey explores the following aspects:

  1. Perception of security in mass gatherings events;
  2. Perception of the actions taken by the law enforcement authorities and other relevant stakeholders to combat threats at national and EU level;
  3. Perception of the contributions given by new technologies to enhance security (especially in mass gatherings) and their impact on human rights and freedoms.

Join our survey! Your opinion is important to us!

To participate in our survey use the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C567CWC



A glimpse to the preliminary results of the survey

The analysis of the results is still ongoing; therefore the graphs below show preliminary data about the EU citizens’ perception of security in mass gatherings. The final findings will be published in the next months.

More than 100 of answers have been collected so far. The figures 1, 2 and 3 show distribution of the respondents per country, educational background and gender. The majority of EU citizens feel secure during mass gatherings, whether they are organised in their city, country or in Europe (Figure 4).  Among the others aspects taken into account, crowd density, risky crowd behaviours and the physical characteristics of the venue were considered as the main aspects that could become a threat for the safe and secure event execution (Figure 5). Respondents were also asked to assess the impact that the development of new technologies have on: 1) the actions that public authorities carry out to ensure the security; 2) rights and freedoms of EU citizens and 3) EU citizens’ perception of security (Figure 6). The majority of the respondents think that the technologies have a positive impact on the actions of public authorities to ensure the security. 30 % of respondents say that new technologies have no impact on rights and freedom, while 20% of the respondents think that new technologies have a negative impact on them. The majority of participants also say that the development of new technologies has a positive impact on the security of citizens in the EU.


Figure 1 – Distribution of the respondents per country


Figure 2 – Distribution of the respondents per educational background


Figure 3 – Distribution of the respondents per gender


Figure 4 – Perception of public security in mass gathering events


Figure 5 – Main aspects that could become a threat to the crowd security


Figure 6 – Impact of new technologies for the enhancement of security


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