The effect of waiting on aggressive tendencies toward emergency department staff: Providing information can help but may also backfire.

INTRODUCTION: Waiting is inevitable for customers of service organizations, yet having to wait can trigger aggression by care receivers toward hospital staff. We explore the effect of waiting times on care receivers' sense of procedural justice and aggressive tendencies, and show the attenuating effects of providing explanatory information. METHODS: Data were collected using survey responses in two studies, both conducted in the waiting area of a large hospital emergency department. Study 1 (n = 328) was a quasi-experiment involving an intervention in which care receivers were provided with information about wait times. Study 1 included three phases: (1) pre-test (week 1, n = 98), in which no information was provided; (2) information condition (weeks 2 & 3, n = 155), in which information was provided through large signs and pamphlets; and (3) post-test (week 4, n = 75), in which no information was provided. Study 2 (n = 99) was conducted a year later and involved the same information provision as the intervention stage of Study 1. RESULTS: The longer the wait duration, the lower care receivers' procedural justice perceptions and the greater their aggressive tendencies. Information provision moderated the association, such that receiving information reduced aggressive tendencies during shorter waits but increased aggressive tendencies during longer waits. We show these effects in two separate data collections, conducted one year apart. CONCLUSION: Competing theories predict that explanatory information should variously reduce and increase aggressive tendencies among people waiting in a queue. Our findings resolve this contradiction by identifying boundaries for the effectiveness of providing information in reducing aggression. We show that providing information is likely to reduce aggression until such point as the wait duration becomes longer than expected based on the information provided.

Correction: How psychology might alleviate violence in queues: Perceived future wait and perceived load moderate violence against service providers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218184.].

How psychology might alleviate violence in queues: Perceived future wait and perceived load moderate violence against service providers.

INTRODUCTION: Queues are inherent to service encounters, as it is not always possible to provide service to all clients at the exact moment they request service. Queues involve waiting for a service in a specific place that might also be crowded, they obstruct the client's' goal of receiving service, and at times lead clients to mistreat service providers and in extreme cases even attack them violently. We show, in a hospital setting, that perceived predicted future wait and load can buffer the causes of violence towards service staff. METHODS: We combine objective data on crowdedness, reports of violence, and durations of time people waited, with psychological measures of perceived load and perceived future wait, collected from 226 people in the Emergency Department (ED) of a large hospital. Visitors to the ED were recruited as they waited for service. They indicated their perceived load in the ED and their perceived remaining wait for service. This data was then triangulated with objective operational data regarding the actual number of people waiting for service (i.e., crowdedness) and objective data regarding staff calls to security to stop violent accounts. RESULTS: We find that with increased crowdedness, there are more calls to security reporting violence. However, this relationship is moderated by two factors: when people perceive the future wait to be short and when they perceive the load on the system to be high. Moreover, a three-way interaction shows that crowdedness is associated with more incidents of violence, however high perceived load and low perceived future wait are associated with fewer violent incidents. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates the relationship between crowded queues and violence towards service staff, and suggests two psychological mechanisms for buffering such violence: reducing perceived future wait and elevating perceived load.