Comparison of customer balking and reneging behavior to queueing theory predictions: An experimental study

摘要

In this paper, we study customer decision-making while in a queuing situation. Customers can either join a queue or balk and return at a later time. Customers who join can renege and also return later. Our objective is to determine whether people seem to follow the benchmarks provided by queuing theory or whether psychological costs and perceptions of time invalidate these benchmarks. We use a computerized experiment where participants face explicit financial rewards and penalties for their decisions in a between subjects, fully crossed design with two experimental factors-clock data, and information about expected waiting time, each at two levels, presence and absence. Evaluated against the queuing theory benchmark, decision-making is quite good. Reneging is very rare, as queuing theory requires. Most participants follow a consistent rule for balking. They balk at every line longer than some critical value, as prescribed by queueing theory. But, even when corrected for heterogeneity in time perception, this critical value is greater than the one that minimizes expected waiting time. The large critical value may be due to risk-aversion or participants overestimating the switching cost. The results are supported by a second experiment using different parameters. Information improved decisions for most participants by increasing the precision of waiting time estimates. In addition, information helps participants who underestimate waiting time to correctly leave the line and those who over-estimate to stay. Providing clock time had almost no impact on decision-making.