Abstract
The present study analyzes the effect on tipping when a gift is offered by servers, and shows that customers generously reciprocate that gift by significantly increasing gratuity. Making the norm of reciprocity focal by offering the identical gift at an opportunity to directly reciprocate, that is, concurrently with bringing the bill, even doubles this effect, indicating that service personnel can substantially—and effortlessly—raise their tips just by leveraging this reciprocity norm.
Highlights
Servers in German restaurants receive tips in the amount of up to €2.2 billion a year (Federal Census Bureau, 2018; Gössling et al, 2020)
The three experimental conditions were as follows: 1. The server offered an alcoholic beverage (a 0.2 cl shot of ouzo) free of charge to each guest after collecting payment. This served as control condition and provides a tipping-baseline, since a gift given after the bill had been paid would have no effect on tipping at all
As we could replicate and extend previous findings on the norm of reciprocity on tipping behavior, our research makes two main contributions: First, in line with Strohmetz et al (2002) and our Hypothesis 1a, we provided further evidence that offering a gift significantly increases the amount of tipping, presumably because customers feel grateful and are willing to express their gratitude in a reciprocal way
Summary
Servers in German restaurants receive tips in the amount of up to €2.2 billion a year (Federal Census Bureau, 2018; Gössling et al, 2020). Since most of these servers only earn low wages, those tips are a substantial source of their income (Payscale, 2015). Crespi (1947) found that fear of disapproval is the main reason why most people tip, which might explain why rational reasons like poor food or service quality do not decrease tips in a substantial way (Futrell, 2015). Roberts et al (2018) state that when dining in a local restaurant, people feel obliged to comply with social norms to maintain social acceptance
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