An extension of Osuna's model to observable queues

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2015.04.001

In his seminal work, Osuna (1985) defines the psychological cost of waiting as the psychological stress accumulated during the waiting period. He proposes that as individuals wait in idleness they accumulate stress, where the rate of accumulation at a particular moment is represented by the intensity of stress felt by the individual at that moment. We build on the works of Osuna (1985) and Suck and Holling (1997) that show how psychological costs build up in a single wait situation. We consider waiting in observable queues and model how the processing of customers ahead in the queue affects the accumulation of stress. In so doing, we uncover the relationship between the total accumulated stress and the queue characteristics such as the queue length, the mean waiting time in the queue and the variance of the waiting time. We view the total stress accumulated during the wait as a measure of the disutility experienced by the individual during the waiting period and final dissatisfaction at the end of waiting period. Thus, in evaluating the psychological costs of waiting in alternate queueing environments, researchers can focus on the final dissatisfaction as represented by the total stress accumulated during the waiting period.