The Psychology of Consumer Decisions to Continue or Abandon Waits from Invisible Service Queues

2 We examine the process by which consumers make sequential decisions whether to continue or abandon waits for service. We focus on the case of invisible queues, where consumers cannot observe their location in a queue as it progresses, only the passage of time. Our hypothesis is that stay-or-renege decisions will frequently sub-optimal, marked by a tendency to prematurely abandon waits from distributions for which it is never optimal to renege (e.g., uniform waits) but excessively persist given distributions that have optimal early reneging windows. We propose a competing-hazards theory that models on-going stay-or-renege decisions as a blend of two opposing influences: the escalating displeasure of waiting and the opposing desire to complete a wait that has been initiated. Among the theoretical predictions that emerge from this theory is that reneging rates will display an inverted U-shape function over time, with consumers being most prone to renege near the mid-point of waits. Reneging is also hypothesized to be affected by a number of normatively-irrelevant moderators, such as the initial number of alternative queues and the amount of physical activity that is engaged in during