Restaurant tipping and customers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the connection between restaurant tipping propensity and customers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion (EC) in an effort to shed more light on consumers’ inclination to pay more for a service than they are legally obligated to (that is to pay more than the price by tipping).

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, two different instruments (Tipping Motivations Scale and Emotional Contagion Scale) were simultaneously administered online to restaurant patrons. The simultaneous administration of the instruments allows the researchers to capture not only tipping propensity but also the linkage between tipping propensity and customers’ susceptibility to EC.

Findings

The results show that customers’ susceptibility to EC, social compliance and server actions has the most effect on intention to tip in restaurants in Turkey. These findings support the notion that universal human characteristics such as the tendency to reciprocate (Hatfield et al., 1993) influence consumers’ propensity to tip regardless of the culture.

Research limitations/implications

While the results of this study offer some insight into why restaurant patrons tip, the fact that the study was carried out only in Turkey which has a collectivist culture limits the generalizability of the results to other societies that may be individualistic in orientation.

Practical implications

The findings of this study can be used by restaurant managers in training their employees and improving their customer patronage, particularly patronage from repeat customers. Similarly, the results could be used by restaurant servers to improve their income.

Social implications

The results of the study have potential to enhance the mutually beneficial relationship that should exist between restaurants and restaurant patrons. Indirectly, the results of the study could improve collective societal good.

Originality/value

This study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the first to use the Tipping Motivations Scale (Whaley et al., 2014) in a different culture (Eurasia) and explain consumers’ tipping propensity explicitly using the concept of EC.

Citation

Koku, P.S. and Savas, S. (2016), "Restaurant tipping and customers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 7, pp. 762-772. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-03-2016-0103