The “Mask Effect” on the tips that customers leave restaurant servers

Brewster, Zachary W.; Gourlay, Kenneth

Masks have become the custom among restaurant workers and bartenders as a form of protection against COVID-19. Yet, given the rapid introduction of masks to the uniforms of restaurant servers there is a dearth of extant scholarship that has explored the effects of face coverings on customers’ behaviors. In response, this research offers a preliminary test of the effect of server masks on a common consumer behavior in the full-service restaurant industry—tipping. We review theoretical and empirical reasons suggesting that a mask may have a negative effect on customers’ tipping practices. Potential mask effects on tipping are then explored with a survey experiment that was administered to a large and diverse sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk “workers.” Our results suggest that wearing a mask is not likely to, on average, have a meaningful effect on how much restaurant customers tip their servers. However, we do observe a negative indirect effect of a mask on customer reported tip amount through diminished perceptions of a hypothetical servers’ friendliness. This effect was found to be attenuated among those who are altruistically motivated to tip servers as a way to help them financially. The implications of our results and directions for future research are discussed.