Tableside Justice: Racial Differences in Retributive Reactions to Dissatisfaction

Abstract

Existing evidence indicates that racial discrimination is a common, if not pervasive, feature of Black Americans’ experiences in U.S. consumer markets. However, few studies have quantitatively explored specific social psychological and interactional consequences of consumer racial discrimination. In response, we draw from literatures on experiences, attributions, and reactions to racial discrimination to posit and test for Black-White differences in consumers’ behavioral responses to dissatisfactory dining experiences. Specifically, past research shows that Black Americans’ dissatisfactory experiences in consumer markets are more often perceived to be the result of consumer racial discrimination. Given their increased exposure to racial discrimination in consumer markets and the United States more broadly, we posit that Black customers will react more punitively to dissatisfactory restaurant experiences than White customers. We test this notion using a within-subject experimental design and regression analyses of survey data collected from a consumer panel of White and Black U.S. adults (n = 307). Results indicate that Black respondents in this sample are more likely than White respondents to penalize their server’s tips and lodge a complaint when dissatisfied with restaurant food and/or service. These findings are consistent with the prediction that Black American consumers tend to react more punitively on average to dissatisfactory consumer experiences than Whites and are consistent with prior scholarship linking coercive and unjust experiences to retributive behaviors. We conclude by discussing implications of these results and the need for further research on racial discrimination in U.S. restaurants and related consumer markets.

Restaurant Tipping and Discrimination: Exploring the Implications of Automatic Gratuities

“…Under automatic gratuities, servers may be less concerned about delaying food for Black patrons. This cost-based explanation aligns with Brewster and Brauer's (2017) finding that black patrons were more likely to penalize servers through tipping when dissatisfied with service, and with which found that Black patrons rated their servers less prompt, controlling for objective service cues.…”

“…Evidence from polling and research suggests that Black restaurant patrons may experience discrimination in restaurant service. In a 2015 Gallup poll, 20% of Black respondents reported being treated unfairly because of their race in a restaurant, bar, theater, or entertainment venue within the last month (Brewster & Brauer, 2017). As this captures perceived discrimination, a survey study of 200 restaurant servers across 18 restaurants found that 38.1% of the respondents admitted to sometimes varying their service quality by race (Brewster & Rusche, 2012).…”

Racial Prejudices, Racialized Workplaces, and Restaurant Servers’ Hyperbolic Perceptions of Black–White Tipping Differences

“…We identified 11 studies that collectively represent 15 independent samples 7 comprised of 1,156 and 4,003 Black and White customers, respectively. 8 As shown in Table 1, these studies have analyzed local, regional, and national samples of consumers (see Leodoro & Lynn, 2007) and have employed a variety of different methodologies including server records (Jewell, 2008; Leodoro & Lynn, 2007; Lynn & Thomas-Haysbert, 2003; Noll & Arnold, 2004), customer exit surveys (Brewster & Lynn, 2014; Lynn et al, 2008; Lynn & Thomas-Haysbert, 2003), and telephone/online surveys of consumers (Brewster & Brauer, 2017b; Lynn, 2004a, 2011, 2014; Lynn & Brewster, 2015). The unconditional average differences in Black and White customers’ tipping practices observed in these studies ranged from 1.87 to 7.18 percentage points with a grand mean difference of 3.95 (CI 95% = 2.14, 5.76) percentage points.…”

Restaurant tipping in Europe: a comparative assessment

“…Table 2 indicates that most studies have been conducted in the USA, though usually with a focus on one restaurant. Tip size is in the order of 20% to 22% in the exit surveys (Brewster & Lynn, 2014;Whaley et al, 2019), 17.8% to 19.3% in an online survey (Brewster & Brauer, 2017), and 11.97% to 21.07% in a summary of studies on tipping differentials between Black and White customers (Brewster & Nowak, 2019). This confirms that US-tipping levels are high, specifically if compared to the only European study, which identified an average 4.1% gratuity in a restaurant in Switzerland (Fernandez et al, 2016).…”

“…For instance, previous studies have measured tip size on the basis of online surveys with hypothetical bill sizes (e.g. Brewster & Brauer, 2017), exit surveys (e.g. Brewster & Lynn, 2014;Whaley et al, 2019), or by using data from point of sale systems (Kim et al, 2017).…”