BALTIMORE, Feb. 5, 2026 — Conventional wisdom is that waiting in a queue online or in a physical line involves a certain cost for people and organizations. Rational analysis has largely based its queue management predictions on remaining wait time, or how long someone has left to wait. Much of the planning around the design of queues is based on this factor.
But new research examines other parameters that can play important roles in determining the "cost of queuing." They include length of the queue, service speed and the characteristics of the wait endured so far. These variables can mean the difference between someone staying in the queue or leaving it.
The research, which has been published in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, is titled "Experienced and Prospective Wait in Queues: A Behavioral Investigation." It was authored by Jing Luo of the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, León Valdés of the University of Pittsburgh and Sera Linardi of the University of Pittsburgh.
"Individuals in a queue will evaluate the burden of completing it by considering the number of people in line and how fast or slow the line is moving, rather than by estimating the remaining wait time or relying on subjective queue experiences," said Luo.
The research studied 1,163 unique subjects across 31 different queue variations. Linardi, an experimental economist, noted that this project may be one of the first to measure the discomfort of waiting in line in a way that can be directly translated into dollars.
The research focuses on settings where the individual who is waiting has access to full information on the length, duration and movement of the line or queue. The researchers found that in these cases of fully informed customers, compensation can be determined based on what is ahead instead of the wait that has already been endured. "This is surprising because we can all identify with the unpleasantness of waiting that escalates in time, or the determination to complete the line because of the time we have sunk into waiting," said Valdés.
Overall, this research cuts through a lot of confusion about what affects queueing behavior, providing a rigorous baseline for the design of future queuing systems. When there is no uncertainty about queue parameters, the pain of standing in line—measured in dollars—depends reliably only on the linear combination of the length and speed of the queue ahead.
Read the full study here .
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