Risk-averse decision making in overbooking problem

Huachun Xiong, Jinxing Xie, Xiaoxue Deng Department of Mathematical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Abstract Traditional literature studying overbooking problems focuses on risk-neutral decision makers. In this paper, we propose a multi-period overbooking model incorporating risk-aversion and extend well-known structural results (the 3-region policy) under the risk-neutral case to the risk-averse one on the basis of an exponential utility function. We also show that the optimal policy for the risk-neutral decision maker can be obtained by letting the risk-aversion parameter approach to zero under the risk-averse case. Therefore, the extant results under the risk-neutral case can be interpreted as a special case of ours. We also investigate how the optimal policy changes with some cost parameters and the decision maker’s degree of risk-aversion. Numerical results suggest that the optimal bounds in the 3-region policy may increase or decrease with the decision maker’s degree of risk-aversion.