Does Opportunity Cost Matters, or the Tolerance Limit of Opportunity Cost?

The summer vacation is coming. Since our hall is undergoing a maintenance project this summer, half of the students have to move out of the hall, including those who have graduated or only applied to live for part of the summer. To give a more detailed picture, our hall has two buildings for undergraduates, the Old Wing and the New Wing. When the New Wing is under maintenance, all the students permitted to stay will have to move to the Old Wing. And this will be vice versa after one month.

Today, June 11 is initially the deadline for those students who are not permitted to stay in summer to move out. However, the college office (administration branch of our hall) announced the delay for the deadline just a few days ago. The reason is that some local graduates cannot move out on time.

This is quite a shock for mainland students. Most of the mainland students have left according to the instructions of the hall, even with very high opportunity cost. For example, I have to move to a guest room in another hall for a week which costs $200 per day. And some mainland students have to take trains and go back home with their luggage in a hurry.

Most mainland students believe that the local students should comply with the instructions announced by the college office because they have more resources and ways to meet those demands, i.e. they have lower opportunity cost. However, for most mainland students, they have not many choices. Probably, the implementation of the instructions will incur a higher opportunity cost. Why do the mainland students have to bear higher opportunity cost while those local students still insist to stay?

There is something to count: the tolerance limit of opportunity cost. Actually, mainland students have a much higher tolerance limit for opportunity cost. Generally speaking, they possess this quality for several reasons.

One important reason is that the very limited resources and choices raise the tolerance limit of opportunity cost. In this unfamiliar environment, they are frequently facing higher opportunity costs and gradually get used to the high opportunity cost. In the case of moving out of the hall, even if they can find a place to live which is quite cheap but is one week after the deadline, they will have no other choices but to pay a higher price for a place which can be moved in immediately after the deadline. However, for local students, they can go back home and put their luggage in their friends’ rooms. If these cases happen all the time, mainland students may regard it reasonable to pay a higher price.

I’d like to use one case this morning to end. One mainland student is scheduled to move into another room in our hall. However, the graduate originally living in this room did not show any signs to move out. She was sleep at 10:40 am and the room was in its original order. The mainland student was in a hurry because her flight is 7 pm. She couldn’t put any her luggage into the room.