I'm sure research has been done in this area, but I never see it reflected in conference seating layouts... probably because there is "easy" and there is "this is what best practice and research articles show."
Indeed, Google Scholar has articles on seating, but most I see in a cursory glance are about children and education, but anyways.
As you can see in the following photo from CHI 2014 in Toronto (just ended this week!), there are people who haven't gone to a seat, yet there are seats open. Why? Well that seems mostly obvious (spatial norms, seats too small, no outside aisles are just a few possibilities). But what bothered me is, given that we know a thing or two about this kind of seating and human behavior, why can't we do better?
