standing room only

So how many seats / chairs do they provide at each gate at an airport? And who decides how many seats are enough? Because it seems to me that there are never enough and people end up just having to stand around or sit with their backs up against the wall. Then when we go to board the flight its like fighting a mob of people just to get to the gate door. I know different size planes with different capacities fly into these gates but there never seems to be enough seats for half the people on the flight.

I think this would be an interesting study to do. The average percentage of seating provided versus the average number of passengers on each flight.