The Psychology of Queuing for Self-Service: Reciprocity and Social Pressure

Hanyeong Kim, Yun Shin Lee and Kun Soo Park
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Hanyeong Kim: NICE Information Service Company, Seoul 07292, Korea
Yun Shin Lee: KAIST College of Business, Seoul 302455, Korea
Kun Soo Park: Department of Industrial Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea

Administrative Sciences, 2018, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: Many services are provided in the form of self-service. In self-service, customers simultaneously become the sole producer and a consumer of a service. Using a scenario-based experiment, we examine the psychology of queuing for self-service, and how inter-customer interaction affects service operation efficiency. We assumed that customers could decide how long they would use a service, and that length of usage increases the value of the service, such as in experience stores where customers try out newly released electronic products. Subjects decide how long they will use a service under different conditions of waiting time and social pressure. We found that generalized reciprocity influenced decisions on service time. Customers who had waited for service for long time chose to use the service for long time when it became their turn, and vice versa—subjects reciprocated the previous customer’s service usage behavior. We also show that the presence of social pressure affects customers’ service usage behavior. Under social pressure, customers tend to reciprocate the negative behavior of a previous customer less.

Keywords: behavioral operations; self-service; queuing; generalized reciprocity; social pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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