Strategic behavior and social optimization in Markovian vacation queues: The case of heterogeneous customers

We consider a single server queueing system in which service shuts down when no customers are present, and is resumed when the queue length reaches a given critical length. We assume customers are heterogeneous on delay sensitivity and analyze customers’ strategic response to this mechanism and compare it to the overall optimal behavior. We provide algorithms to compute the equilibrium arrival rates and also derive the monotonicity of equilibrium and optimal arrival rates. We show that there may exist multiple equilibria in such a system and the optimal arrival rate may be larger or smaller than the decentralized equilibrium one.

► In this study, we examine customers’ equilibrium and optimal strategies in vacation queue. ► Customers are heterogeneous on delay sensitivity. ► We find that multiple equilibria exist and optimal arrival rate could be larger or smaller than the equilibrium ones.