Strategic customer behavior in a queueing system with delayed observations

Apostolos Burnetas (), Antonis Economou () and George Vasiliadis ()
Additional contact information
Apostolos Burnetas: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Antonis Economou: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
George Vasiliadis: Technological Education Institute of Western Macedonia

Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, 2017, vol. 86, issue 3, No 9, 389-418

Abstract: Abstract We consider the single-server Markovian queue with infinite waiting space and assume that there exists a certain reward-cost structure that reflects the customers’ desire for service and their dislike for waiting. The system is unobservable for the customers at their arrival instants, but the administrator provides them with periodic announcements of their current positions at rate $$\theta $$ θ , so that they may renege if it is preferable for them to do so. The customers are strategic, and their decision problem is whether to join or not the system upon arrival and whether to stay or renege later. Their strategies are specified by a join probability q and a reneging threshold n. We determine the equilibrium strategies $$(n_e,q_e)$$ ( n e , q e ) and study the socially optimal strategies $$(n_\mathrm{soc},q_\mathrm{soc})$$ ( n soc , q soc ) . Extensive numerical experiments provide interesting qualitative insight about the model. In particular, the equilibrium throughput of the system is a unimodal function of $$\theta $$ θ . Moreover, despite the fact that we have an avoid-the-crowd situation, it is possible that $$q_\mathrm{soc}>q_e$$ q soc > q e , in contrast to the classical unobservable model.

Keywords: Queueing; Strategic customers; Balking; Reneging; Observable queue; Unobservable queue; Delayed observation; Periodic announcements; 60K25; 90B22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11134-017-9522-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:queues:v:86:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11134-017-9522-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11134/

DOI: 10.1007/s11134-017-9522-5

Access Statistics for this article

Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications is currently edited by Sergey Foss

More articles in Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().