This reminds me (vaguely) of table saving at crowded restaurants with a long line to wait to order. People with friends have them save a table. This results in large numbers of tables being hogged people who are not eating creating a sort of artificial table shortage for people who actually just got their food and need to sit down.
Both the table saving and the parking dibs are based on hoarding scarce resources, but also making them more scarce by keeping the resource out of use. It’s a spiral of increasing scarcity as more people try to save tables, parking spaces or whatever because others are doing it.
