Restaurant Employees’ Perception of Tipping Systems Across Country Differences

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the practical value of how restaurant employees perceive different tipping systems and if perceived fairness, distributive justice, and/or perceived control vary across countries (Taiwan versus United States). Thus, a five (tipping scenarios) × two (country) MANOVA with perceived fairness, distributive justice, and perceived control as dependent variables followed by separate ANOVA tests for each dependent variable were used to test the hypotheses. Data from two countries were used to gain insight into Taiwanese and U.S. employees’ perceived fairness, distributive justice, and perceived control. Job involvement is also included as a control variable for each of the five restaurant tipping scenarios depicted. There is a significant difference in perceived fairness among all five tipping scenarios; the post hoc test revealed that tipping Scenario 3 (servers keep their tips) has the highest perceived fairness score of all the other tipping scenarios. More detail results and implications of this study for theory and practice are described throughout the article.

KEYWORDS:

• distributive justice
• job involvement
• perceived control
• perceived fairness
• restaurant tipping