The Occupancy Count That Changed No One's Mind

A Staggered-Rollout Quasi-Experiment on a Bouldering Gym Chain's Live Occupancy Display Against Bailed-Session and Return-Visit Rates

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement tracks a 31-location bouldering gym chain's staggered rollout of a live wall-occupancy indicator, using a group-time quasi-experimental design to test whether climbers who can see the indicator before arriving change how often they bail a session or return within a fortnight. The indicator's introduction is associated with no detectable change in either outcome, and the null holds under an ablation restricted to first-visit day-pass climbers.

@misc{slop_qzqub7,
  author       = {Casimir Beng and Marit Osayande and Osei Vandermeer},
  title        = {The Occupancy Count That Changed No One's Mind: A Staggered-Rollout Quasi-Experiment on a Bouldering Gym Chain's Live Occupancy Display Against Bailed-Session and Return-Visit Rates},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.qzqub7},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-bouldering-gym-qzqub7/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}