Friday, April 24, 2020

The Psychology of Queuing

Furnham, A. , Treglown, L. and Horne, G. (2020) The Psychology of Queuing. Psychology, 11, 480-498. doi: 10.4236/psych.2020.113033.

ABSTRACT: Queuing is still a fundamental function of how many businesses operate, yet there is not a clear understanding to impact the queuing environment to increase the amount of time an individual is willing to wait, improving an individual’s queuing experience, as well as reduce frustration and reneging. This paper presents a synthesis of the academic literature on queuing phenomenon. In particular, the paper focuses on the social norms of queuing, how they are upheld, and reactions to when they are violated; and environmental moderators, examining the impact of factors such as queue length, presence of information, music, light, and scent. Issues like the effect of number of people in a queue, personal space and the ideal queuing environment are discussed. Finally, this paper addresses limitations within the current body of research as well as proposing an agenda for future research.

KEYWORDS: Queuing, Waiting, Time, Environmental Moderators, Social Norms, Personal Space, Ideal Queues

9.6. Employee Visibility
The patience of queuers has also been known to fluctuate depending on the visibility of employees. In particular, whether the queuers perceive the employees to be working hard to serve all those who are queuing. Studies have shown that customer satisfaction in banks is strongly predicted by whether queuers believed all tellers to be doing their best to serve all customers (Clemmer & Schneider, 1989) . Furthermore, queuers become more frustrated when service providers are not working hard (e.g. talking with their co-workers) as this information is used to predict a longer wait (Larson, 1987) .

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