2022.09.15 英国人为什么喜欢排队

shiyi18

Why Britons love to queue
The economics of queuing—is it really the best system?
People queue near Tower Bridge to pay their respects, following the death of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, in London, Britain, September 15, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
Sep 15th 2022

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Hundreds of thousands of Britons have responded to the death of Queen Elizabeth II in a very British way: by queuing. A line to see the queen lying in state started to form on September 12th, two days before viewings in Westminster Hall began. By the afternoon of September 15th the estimated waiting time in London was over eight hours. It will continue, day and night, until 6.30am on September 19th, the morning of her funeral. As the line snaked for miles along the Thames, observers reacted appreciatively. One tweet called The Queue “the greatest bit of British performance art that has ever happened”. But is queuing the best way to do things?

Organisers needed a way to allocate scarce resources, or in this case, limited slots to file through Westminster Hall past the coffin. An ideal system would give spots to those who value them the most, with everyone having an equal shot at securing one. A queue effectively rations out the spots to those who turn up first—and who are willing to wait. An alternative might have been a lottery, with spots randomly allocated to a subset of those who applied, as was deployed for a concert to mark the queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June. Or even perhaps some kind of market, with prices for each time slot set high enough to balance supply and demand. To visit Buckingham Palace, for example, one must buy a ticket.


As a rationing mechanism, a queue has some advantages. Participating in a line that could stretch overnight, or at least several hours, is a strong signal of one’s eagerness. It also reduces the risk that those who cannot afford to pay for the privilege are shut out. But it has drawbacks. Although participants are not paying money for their spot, they are paying in time and comfort. Economists fret that a queue such as this favours those without much else to do and excludes those who cannot, for example, afford to skip work. Others, such as the frail and the sick, might not be able to access the queue at all.

The alternatives reduce the inefficiency of long waits. But they have their own disadvantages. A lottery system risks those who feel very strongly about seeing the queen losing out to someone lucky who does not care very much. A market-based system will allocate spots based on who values the experience—and who is also most able to pay. That would seem distasteful and unfair. A study published in 1977, by Martin Weitzman, then of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed that, in cases where needs were more equally distributed or where income was more unequally distributed, rationing (of which queuing is one form) outperformed pricing in its ability to allocate things to whoever needed them most.

Unregulated queues, where people can swap their spots, can be taken over by market mechanisms. Paying someone to queue in your place to get tickets to a Broadway show in New York costs $50 for a wait of two hours and $25 for each extra hour after that. Britons, typically keen and fair queuers, would probably disapprove of such intervention. Queuers lining up in London are given wristbands to identify their place in the line. That makes spots non-transferable. It also prevents queue-jumping and allows for people to pop to the bathroom.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those in the queue on the morning of September 15th were enthusiastic about, and undaunted by, the lengthy wait ahead of them. Two visitors, Josh and Adam, had spent their first three hours dealing with emails, taking work calls and soaking up the “amazing atmosphere”. A shorter queue existed for those with disabilities. Petunia, a retiree queuer, said that a paid system would not be inclusive, “and that certainly wouldn’t be something that the queen would want.” Her daughter, Holly, seemed even keener to stand around: “I think the queue is part of it.” ■



英国人为什么喜欢排队
排队的经济学--它真的是最好的制度吗？
2022年9月15日，在英国伦敦，英国女王伊丽莎白去世后，人们在塔桥附近排队致意。REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
2022年9月15日



数十万英国人以一种非常英国化的方式回应了英国女王伊丽莎白二世的去世：排队。9月12日，在威斯敏斯特大厅开始瞻仰女王遗容的两天前，就有人开始排队了。到9月15日下午，估计伦敦的等待时间超过8小时。它将日以继夜地持续下去，直到9月19日，即她葬礼的早晨6.30。当队伍沿着泰晤士河蜿蜒数英里时，观察家们做出了赞赏的反应。一条推特称排队是 "有史以来最伟大的英国行为艺术"。但排队是做事的最佳方式吗？

组织者需要一种方法来分配稀缺的资源，或者在这种情况下，分配有限的时间来排队通过威斯敏斯特大厅的棺材。一个理想的系统会把名额给那些最重视它们的人，每个人都有平等的机会获得一个名额。排队实际上是将名额分配给那些先到的人，而且是愿意等待的人。另一种方法可能是抽签，将名额随机分配给申请者中的一部分人，就像6月份为纪念女王的白金纪念日而举办的音乐会那样。甚至可能是某种市场，将每个时段的价格定得足够高，以平衡供需关系。例如，要参观白金汉宫，人们必须买票。


作为一种配给机制，排队有一些好处。排队可能会持续一整夜，或者至少几个小时，这是一个强烈的信号，表明一个人的渴望。它也减少了那些无力支付特权的人被排除在外的风险。但它也有缺点。虽然参与者没有为他们的位置支付金钱，但他们是在支付时间和舒适度。经济学家担心，这样的排队有利于那些没有太多其他事情可做的人，而排除了那些例如没有能力翘班的人。还有一些人，如体弱者和病人，可能根本无法进入排队的行列。

这些替代方案减少了长时间等待的低效率。但它们也有自己的缺点。抽签制度有可能使那些非常想看到女王的人输给那些并不关心的幸运者。一个以市场为基础的系统将根据谁重视这种体验--以及谁最有能力支付来分配位置。这似乎是令人厌恶和不公平的。1977年由当时麻省理工学院的马丁-魏茨曼发表的一项研究表明，在需求分布较为平均或收入分布较为不均的情况下，配给（排队是其中的一种形式）在将东西分配给最需要的人的能力上优于定价。

不受管制的排队，人们可以交换他们的位置，可以被市场机制所取代。花钱请人代替你排队买纽约百老汇演出的门票，等待两小时需要50美元，之后每多一小时需要25美元。英国人是典型的热心和公平的排队者，他们可能会不赞成这种干预。在伦敦排队的人都有腕带，以识别他们在队伍中的位置。这使得位置不能被转让。它还可以防止插队，并允许人们去洗手间。

也许毫不奇怪，9月15日早上排队的人对他们面前的漫长等待充满热情，而且毫不畏惧。两位来访者乔希和亚当在前三个小时里处理电子邮件、接听工作电话并沉浸在 "奇妙的氛围 "中。残疾人士的排队时间较短。退休人员排队的佩蒂尼娅说，付费系统不会有包容性，"这肯定不会是女王想要的"。她的女儿霍莉似乎更愿意站在旁边。"我认为排队是它的一部分"。■