How to Prevent Waiting Customers From Leaving: The Interaction Impact Between Granularity and Mindset on Reneging Behavior

Abstract

Waiting for service is inevitable. Tourism and hospitality service providers frequently extend wait times for customers, necessitating guests to remain on a waitlist because service cannot be matched to fluctuating demand. Customers encounter quantitative assessments of wait time in numbers and units. This study investigated how the granularity (i.e., fine-grained [15–30 min] vs. coarse-grained [1/4–1/2 h]) of wait-time information influenced consumers' responses depending on their mindsets (i.e., abstract vs. concrete). Two scenario-based experiments showed that reneging, which occurs when a waiting customer leaves the queue before receiving service, was more frequent with coarse-grained than fine-grained wait-time information. Also, when coarse-grained information was provided, customers with an abstract mindset tended to renege more than when fine-grained information was offered. Anxiety emerged as the underlying psychological mechanism. This study contributes to numerical cognition research and affords managers insight into mitigating waiting customers' negative reactions based on granularity effects coupled with oriented mindsets.