IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/18-053.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Last Place Aversion in Queues

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan W. Buell

    (Harvard Business School, Technology and Operations Management Unit)

Abstract

This paper documents the effects of last place aversion in queues and its implications for customer experiences and behaviors, as well as for operating performance. An observational analysis of customers queuing at a grocery store, and four online studies in which participants waited in virtual queues, revealed that waiting in last place diminishes wait satisfaction while increasing the probabilities of switching and abandoning queues, with detrimental implications for service throughput. The research suggests that last place aversion can lead to maladaptive customer behaviors – switching behaviors that increase wait times, and abandoning when the benefits of waiting are most pronounced. The results indicate that this behavior is partially explained by the inability to make a downward social comparison; namely, when no one is behind a queuing individual, that person is less certain that continuing to wait is worthwhile. Furthermore, this paper provides evidence that queue transparency is an effective service design lever that managers can use to reduce the deleterious effects of last place aversion in queues. When people can’t see that they’re in last place, the behavioral effects of last place aversion are nullified, and when they can see that they’re not in last place, the tendency to renege is greatly diminished. Finally, a system-level experiment, in which pairs of queues were created and analyzed, reveals that when the effects of last place aversion are addressed, overall abandonment decreases, such that with equivalent arrival and service rates, total service throughput can be increased.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan W. Buell, 2017. "Last Place Aversion in Queues," Harvard Business School Working Papers 18-053, Harvard Business School, revised Oct 2019.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:18-053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/pages/download.aspx?name=18-053.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leclerc, France & Schmitt, Bernd H & Dube, Laurette, 1995. "Waiting Time and Decision Making: Is Time like Money?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(1), pages 110-119, June.
    2. Buunk, Abraham P. & Gibbons, Frederick X., 2007. "Social comparison: The end of a theory and the emergence of a field," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 3-21, January.
    3. Ziv Carmon & J. George Shanthikumar & Tali F. Carmon, 1995. "A Psychological Perspective on Service Segmentation Models: The Significance of Accounting for Consumers' Perceptions of Waiting and Service," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(11), pages 1806-1815, November.
    4. Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo, 2011. "The Impact of Delaying the Delay Announcements," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1198-1210, October.
    5. Richard C. Larson, 1987. "OR Forum—Perspectives on Queues: Social Justice and the Psychology of Queueing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(6), pages 895-905, December.
    6. Raymond Hicks & Dustin Tingley, 2011. "Causal mediation analysis," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 11(4), pages 605-619, December.
    7. Guillaume Roels & Xuanming Su, 2014. "Optimal Design of Social Comparison Effects: Setting Reference Groups and Reference Points," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(3), pages 606-627, March.
    8. Senthil Veeraraghavan & Laurens Debo, 2009. "Joining Longer Queues: Information Externalities in Queue Choice," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(4), pages 543-562, April.
    9. Dilip Soman & Mengze Shi, 2003. "Virtual Progress: The Effect of Path Characteristics on Perceptions of Progress and Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(9), pages 1229-1250, September.
    10. Ryan W. Buell & Taly Reich & Michael I. Norton, 2014. ""Last-Place Aversion": Evidence and Redistributive Implications," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 105-149.
    11. McFadden, Daniel, 1999. "Rationality for Economists?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 19(1-3), pages 73-105, December.
    12. Felix Oberholzer‐Gee, 2006. "A Market for Time Fairness and Efficiency in Waiting Lines," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 427-440, August.
    13. Yina Lu & Andrés Musalem & Marcelo Olivares & Ariel Schilkrut, 2013. "Measuring the Effect of Queues on Customer Purchases," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1743-1763, August.
    14. Zhou, Rongrong & Soman, Dilip, 2003. "Looking Back: Exploring the Psychology of Queuing and the Effect of the Number of People Behind," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(4), pages 517-530, March.
    15. Ryan W. Buell & Michael I. Norton, 2011. "The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(9), pages 1564-1579, February.
    16. Laurens G. Debo & Christine Parlour & Uday Rajan, 2012. "Signaling Quality via Queues," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(5), pages 876-891, May.
    17. Hornik, Jacob, 1984. "Subjective vs. Objective Time Measures: A Note on the Perception of Time in Consumer Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 11(1), pages 615-618, June.
    18. Robert J. Batt & Christian Terwiesch, 2015. "Waiting Patiently: An Empirical Study of Queue Abandonment in an Emergency Department," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 39-59, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jorge Mejia & Chris Parker, 2021. "When Transparency Fails: Bias and Financial Incentives in Ridesharing Platforms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(1), pages 166-184, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ryan W. Buell, 2021. "Last-Place Aversion in Queues," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1430-1452, March.
    2. Sezer Ülkü & Chris Hydock & Shiliang Cui, 2020. "Making the Wait Worthwhile: Experiments on the Effect of Queueing on Consumption," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(3), pages 1149-1171, March.
    3. Ryan, Gerard & Hernández-Maskivker, Gilda-María & Valverde, Mireia & Pàmies-Pallisé, Maria-del-Mar, 2018. "Challenging conventional wisdom: Positive waiting," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 64-72.
    4. Sezer Ülkü & Chris Hydock & Shiliang Cui, 2022. "Social Queues (Cues): Impact of Others’ Waiting in Line on One’s Service Time," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7958-7976, November.
    5. Gabriel R. Bitran & Juan-Carlos Ferrer & Paulo Rocha e Oliveira, 2008. "OM Forum--Managing Customer Experiences: Perspectives on the Temporal Aspects of Service Encounters," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 61-83, July.
    6. Kaan Kuzu & Long Gao & Susan H. Xu, 2019. "To Wait or Not to Wait: The Theory and Practice of Ticket Queues," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 853-874, October.
    7. Rouba Ibrahim, 2018. "Sharing delay information in service systems: a literature survey," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 49-79, June.
    8. Qiuping Yu & Yiming Zhang & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2022. "Delay Information in Virtual Queues: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on a Major Ride-Sharing Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(8), pages 5745-5757, August.
    9. Brett A. Hathaway & Seyed M. Emadi & Vinayak Deshpande, 2021. "Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You: An Empirical Study of Caller Behavior Under a Callback Option," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1508-1526, March.
    10. Gad Allon & Awi Federgruen, 2007. "Competition in Service Industries," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(1), pages 37-55, February.
    11. Necati Tereyağoğlu & Peter S. Fader & Senthil Veeraraghavan, 2018. "Multiattribute Loss Aversion and Reference Dependence: Evidence from the Performing Arts Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 421-436, January.
    12. Kwangji Kim & Mi-Jung Kim & Jae-Kyoon Jun, 2020. "Small Queuing Restaurant Sustainable Revenue Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-14, April.
    13. Chan, Elisa K. & Wan, Lisa C. & Yi, Xiao (Shannon), 2022. "Smart technology vs. embarrassed human: The inhibiting effect of anticipated technology embarrassment," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    14. Ruijie Zhang & Xiaohua Han & Rowan Wang & Jianghua Zhang & Yinghao Zhang, 2023. "Please don't make me wait! Influence of customers' waiting preference and no‐show behavior on appointment systems," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(6), pages 1597-1616, June.
    15. Kumar, Piyush & Dada, Maqbool, 2021. "Investigating the impact of service line formats on satisfaction with waiting," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 974-993.
    16. Eyster, Erik & Galeotti, Andrea & Kartik, Navin & Rabin, Matthew, 2014. "Congested observational learning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 519-538.
    17. Christian Maier & Sven Laumer & Tim Weitzel, 2022. "A Dark Side of Telework: A Social Comparison-Based Study from the Perspective of Office Workers," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 64(6), pages 793-811, December.
    18. Davide Crapis & Bar Ifrach & Costis Maglaras & Marco Scarsini, 2017. "Monopoly Pricing in the Presence of Social Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3586-3608, November.
    19. Bolandifar, Ehsan & DeHoratius, Nicole & Olsen, Tava, 2023. "Modeling abandonment behavior among patients," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(1), pages 243-254.
    20. Ryan W. Buell & Michael I. Norton, 2011. "The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(9), pages 1564-1579, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Behavioral operations; queues; reference effects; last place aversion; transparency;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:18-053. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.