Social Queues (Cues): Impact of Others’ Waiting in Line on One’s Service Time
通过实验发现，当有人在后面排队时，顾客会主动缩短自己的服务时间，牺牲消费效用，这种利他行为在自己也排过队后会减弱，而遮挡服务区与排队区的视线能减轻这种影响。
The traditional queueing literature assumes that service time is largely independent of social influences. However, queues are social systems; and social considerations are therefore likely to impact customers’ service time decision to the extent they have control. Through a series of experiments, we show that when others are waiting in line, customers tend to accelerate their own service time, and in doing so, sacrifice their own consumption utility. This behavior is driven by concern for others. Notably, the effect is diminished when they themselves have waited, as it is perceived as fair to let others wait if one also had to wait. We further show that obscuring the visibility between customers in service and those waiting in line diminishes the negative effect of others queueing on one’s own service time. This paper was accepted by Jay Swaminathan, operations management. Supplemental Material: Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4282 .