Summary
This stream of work is in the behavioural queueing domain. That is, we analyze how human behaviour impacts the operations of queueing systems, and the way in which these systems should be managed. The application area is in the analysis and design of congested service systems, such as those in the public services sector.
Relevance
We go back-and-forth between what real-life data tells us about the system and the behaviour of its agents in practice, and what theory teaches us about its dynamics. For example, we study queues where customers may misreport information that is private to them (e.g., about their own true medical conditions) in order to be served faster. It is not obvious how we can get people to be more honest in those settings. Through the analysis of mathematical models and data from behavioral experiments, we study what incentivizes people to cheat in queues, and how to mitigate cheating.