Appointment games with unobservable and observable schedules

Matthias Deceuninck, Stijn Vuyst, Dieter Claeys and Dieter Fiems ()
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Matthias Deceuninck: Ghent University
Stijn Vuyst: Ghent University
Dieter Claeys: Ghent University
Dieter Fiems: Ghent University

Annals of Operations Research, 2021, vol. 307, issue 1, No 6, 93-110

Abstract: Abstract Appointment scheduling assigns start times in a session or consultation block to a set of tasks that share a common resource. For a generic repeated appointment scheduling problem, we study the trade-off between waiting for an appointment and waiting at the appointed time. Assuming that being scheduled later during a session implies that one has to wait longer for service (on average), it is often beneficial to choose a consultation block further away. We study this trade-off both when the patients have no information on how many patients are already scheduled in future consultation blocks and when they can observe the future block schedules. By some numerical examples, we find that in both cases the rational choice considerably changes between consecutive appointment blocks, patients favouring later blocks when the next appointment block starts in the near future. We also compare the rational choice with the socially optimal schedule and find that socially optimal scheduling can significantly reduce the waiting cost.

Keywords: Appointment scheduling; Game theory; Wardrop equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/s10479-021-04168-z

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