 The effects of party size and dining duration on tipping behaviorErik Haugom and Christer Thrane Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2025, vol. 117, issue C Abstract: In this study, we propose a theoretical framework to explain how party size and dining duration affect tipping behavior. The framework suggests that both the party size and the dining duration effects are hill-shaped and thus should be modeled nonlinearly. We use data from a large-scale transaction database (n > 800,000) for a Norwegian restaurant chain to test the proposed effects. We also merge these data with information on waiter characteristics and customer ratings for the 60 pizza restaurants in the sample. In line with the theoretical propositions, the results show that party size and dining duration affect tipping behavior nonlinearly. The association between both variables and tipping is mostly inversely U-shaped. Yet both effects are contingent on each other, the size of the bill, customer ratings, and the presence of alcohol consumption. Keywords: Tipping; Likelihood of tipping; Party size; Dining duration; Customer ratings; Norway; Transaction level data (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:117:y:2025:i:c:s2214804325000539 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2025.102386 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.