Equilibrium and Socially Optimal Balking Strategies in Markovian Queues with Vacations and Sequential Abandonment

Abstract

In this paper, we consider customers’ equilibrium and socially optimal behavior in a single-server Markovian queue with multiple vacations and sequential abandonments. Upon arrival customers decide for themselves whether to join or balk, based on the level of information available to them. During the server’s vacation, present customers become impatient and decide sequentially whether they will abandon the system or not upon the availability of a secondary transport facility. Assuming the linear reward-cost structure, we analyze the equilibrium balking strategies of customers under four cases: fully and almost observable as well as fully and almost unobservable. In all the above cases, the individual and social optimal strategies are derived. Finally, the dependence of performance measures on system parameters are demonstrated via numerical experiments.