Not All Lines Are Skipped Equally: An Experimental Investigation of Line-Sitting and Express Lines

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Problem definition: In this paper, we investigate how line-sitting and express lines affect customers’ satisfaction and fairness perception about queues. In line-sitting, customers skip the wait by hiring others to stand in line on their behalf. In express lines, customers skip the wait by purchasing priority. Because both schemes disrupt the first-in-first-out (FIFO) rule, they may be perceived to be unfair and lead to customer dissatisfaction. Methodology/results: In three experiments, we find that customers are more satisfied with the overall queueing experience when they encounter a line-sitter than when they encounter an express-line customer, even when the wait time is held constant. We also find that customers perceive express lines as less fair than line-sitting, which has a significant influence on their satisfaction. A key operational difference between line-sitting and express lines is that line-sitting involves a one-to-one swap between a line-sitter doing a fair share of waiting and their client, whereas express lines insert a new priority customer into the queue without an existing surrogate in the queue. We show that if line-sitting includes an insertion by letting a line-sitter hold a spot for more than one customer, then line-sitting is perceived to be just as unfair and unsatisfying as express lines. Managerial implications: Our results imply that express lines can engender a lower fairness perception, thus harming future business through both more negative word of mouth and a higher customer churn. Therefore, service providers should beware of customer backlash against express lines and yet be more open-minded about line-sitting, provided that one-to-one swaps can be enforced. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0338 .