In this paper, we examine whether the format of service lines affects customers’ satisfaction with their queuing experience. Using a goal-theoretic approach, and data from a series of experimental studies, we show that the duration of the wait moderates the psychological tradeoff between the initial queue length and its rate of movement, such that customers prefer a single line format for shorter waits but a multiple line format for longer waits. We also show that satisfaction declines with an increase in the number of stages in service lines. This adverse effect of multi-staging can be mitigated by using information devices as well as orienting customers away from local, stage-specific, sub-goals towards the overall goal of receiving service and exiting the system. We synthesize these findings about the psychophysics of queuing to generalize a model of satisfaction with waiting that accounts for the effect of service line formats and can represent customers’ utility functions in models of queuing systems.

在本文中，我们研究了服务线路的形式是否会影响客户对他们的排队体验的满意度。使用目标理论方法和一系列实验研究的数据，我们表明等待的持续时间可以调节初始队列长度与其移动速度之间的心理权衡，因此客户更喜欢单行格式以缩短等待时间但是多行格式可以等待更长的时间。我们还表明，随着服务线阶段数量的增加，满意度会下降。多阶段的这种不利影响可以通过使用信息设备以及将客户从本地、特定阶段、子目标转向接收服务和退出系统的总体目标来减轻。