Restaurant Tipping Discrimination: Evidence from a Representative Sample of US Households

Abstract

Abstract Discrimination in tipping creates concerns of inequity in service quality for restaurant operators (Brewster 2017). We use the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey data to conduct one of the very few nationally representative examinations of tipping behavior at US restaurants. We focus on differences in tipping behavior between groups with identifiable characteristics and investigate whether tipping differences between groups are robust to inclusion of a variety of controls. We investigate tipping at the extensive and intensive margins. In contrast to earlier studies, we find little evidence that tipping varies by race and gender.