Why are people often late?

Some Indians think that Indians are often late and traffic is usually the excuse. A Greek friend of mine says Greek people are known for their tardiness and an unexpected visit from a relative is often the excuse. I find it hard to believe this one but my Russian friend says that Russians are often late because it is bullshit to be early. These are narratives from people who base their opinion based on personal experience, the validity of which cannot be guaranteed. However, there are more rigorous studies that indeed find cross-cultural differences in punctuality.   

"Participacion Ciudadana", the civic group behind a campaign in Ecuador, reckons that lateness costs Ecuador $724m (or 4.3% of GDP) each year (Cabral & Pacheco-de-Almeida, 2006). Given the importance of punctuality in every aspect of life, it is important to look at the factors affecting  punctuality and to identify situations that are conducive to punctual behavior.   

Kahneman and Tversky (1977) describe the "planning fallacy" as the underestimation of time taken for tasks by individuals. If this is the case, it could explain why people are late.  Buehler, Griffin, & MacDonald, (1997) explain this as a wishful thinking by the planner. The prediction bias reduces for hard-working people on undesirable task while it remains high for people who "live for the moment" (Pezzo, Litman, and Pezzo, 2006).  Although it is reasonable to expect that personal characteristics might be at play, Buehler & Griffin (2003) find that the prediction bias is not related to an individual's level of optimism and procrastination. Planning fallacy could also be caused because people don't account for uncertainties.  

The social psychology literature says that different societies have different perceptions of time and that some societies are innately more punctual than others. In the working paper "Punctuality: A cultural trait as equilibrium" by Basu and Weibull, the authors argue that although social psychologists believe punctuality to be a cultural trait, it could be the case that punctuality has nothing to do with the innate characteristics or preferences of the group. Punctuality may be an equilibrium response of individuals to what they expect others to do and to what they expect the others to expect from them. This means that societies can be in a situation where most people are punctual (punctual equilibrium) or in a situation where most people are tardy, and this has little do with who they are as opposed to what they choose to do. Consider a situation where a group of say 10 people are meeting, such that the meeting doesn't start until all of them arrive. In their first interaction, if they do not know whether others will be on time, they will perhaps be on time. If for some reason some people happen to come late on more than one meeting, everyone would have an incentive to start coming late. A meeting scheduled at 10:00 would then start at 10:05 as everyone would account for the fact that everyone else will be late.  

Consider a situation where everyone ought to meet at 10:00 but everyone shows up at 10:05. Does this really constitute tardy behavior? Although they aren't following standard time they have an understanding between themselves and are able to coordinate at the same time. If different countries reach different equilibrium (punctual or tardy), there could be  a problem if people from a punctual country need to interact with people from a tardy country, and vice versa.  

I am not sure if countries that move into a tardy equilibrium can reach a punctual equilibrium unless there is movement that makes people be on time, but I would think that doing so would be arequirement in the process of world integration.   

PS: If my punctual friends are reading this article, I would like to apologize for being late. I thought you would be late as well.  

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