Abstract
Waiting, whether for services, for someone, or for something, is an inescapable part of life. This paper addresses a gap in the waiting time literature by examining previously sparsely studied relationships between individual- and travel-related characteristics and attitudes toward waiting using a revealed preference dataset of Northern California commuters (N = 2617). Correlational analyses, followed by a trivariate seemingly unrelated regression equations model, are developed for three waiting attitudinal constructs: general tolerance toward waiting, and attitudes toward equipped and expected waiting. Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, time use perceptions and preferences, personality traits, multitasking attitudes (polychronicity), commute preferences and expectations, and general attitudes (e.g. pro-technology) are all seen to have significant effects on waiting attitudes. As this survey was executed on commuters, it also facilitates a unique simultaneous exploration of travel and wait time attributes, time uses that are often similarly viewed in day-to-day life. From this perspective, we see that longer commute times and distances are correlated with negative attitudes toward waiting, while commuters with pro-transit, pro-density, and pro-active transportation attitudes tend to have positive attitudes toward waiting. Additionally, we see that those with preferences for multitasking in general or at their jobs can tolerate waiting better. Overall, this study constitutes a distinctive contribution to the waiting time literature, capitalizing on a rich dataset to make important connections between related time uses and a multitude of other variables—key among them polychronicity, with its potential ability to reduce the negative perception and experience of waiting. Findings from this study may also benefit transportation and other service providers by facilitating an understanding of how various consumer groups/demographics view waiting, thus enabling providers to better cater to diverse needs/populations.
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Source: Modified from Mishra et al. (2015)
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Notes
Of course, not everyone will have read or internalized the preface equally thoroughly, so some respondents may have had a different context in mind when reporting their attitudes.
As Watts and Urry (2008, p. 870) aptly put it, “Unpacking takes time and space; therefore a journey where there is not enough time or space to unpack creates a sense of being squashed, even if the person has a seat and the vehicle is clean and punctual. Passengers are forced either to remain packed whilst travelling and consequently can make little use of their time. Or, … passengers adapt to cramped and short journeys by only partially unpacking with music players, mobile phones, and novels ready-to-hand…”.
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Acknowledgements
Survey design, implementation, and previous analyses for this project were funded by a succession of University of California, Davis University Transportation Centers, a faculty grant from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA). Atiyya Shaw was funded under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF), Grant DGE 1650044. The authors are grateful to those who were involved in survey design, data collection, and data entry/cleaning, especially Amanda Neufeld and Zhi Dong. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies. The authors are grateful for the constructive comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
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FAS: literature review, analysis and interpretation of results, manuscript preparation; AM: data collection and cleaning, manuscript review; PLM: survey instrument design, data collection, feedback on analysis, manuscript review; GC: survey instrument design, data collection, manuscript review.
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Shaw, F.A., Malokin, A., Mokhtarian, P.L. et al. Who doesn’t mind waiting? Examining the relationships between waiting attitudes and person- and travel-related attributes. Transportation 48, 395–429 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-019-10054-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-019-10054-2