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发表于 2016-7-27 07:11:23
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In America alone, tipping is now a $16 billion-a-year industry - all the more surprising since it is a behavioural oddity. Consumers acting rationally ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service, Tips, which are voluntary, above and beyond a service's contracted cost, and delivered afterwards, should not exist. So why do they? The conventional wisdom is that tips both reward the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality. The better the service, the bigger the tip.
A paper analysing data from 2,547 groups dining at 20 different restaurants shows that the correlation between larger tips and better service was very weak: only a tiny part of the variability in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped anywhere between 8% and 37% of the meal price.
Tipping is better explained by culture than by economics. In America, the custom hasbecome institutionalised: it is regarded as part of the accepted cost of a service. In a New Yorkrestaurant, failing to tip at least 15% could well mean abuse from the waiter. Hairdressers canexpect to get 15-20%, the man who delivers your groceries $2. In Europe, tipping is lesscommon; in many restaurants, discretionary tipping is being replaced by a standard servicecharge. In many Asian countries, tipping has never really caught on at all.
How to account for these national differences? Look no further than psychology.According to Michael Lynn, the Cornell paper's co-author, countries in which people are moreextrovert, sociable or neurotic tend to tip more. Tipping relieves anxiety about being served bystrangers: And, says' Mr Lynn, "in America, where people are outgoing and expressive, tippingis about social approval. If you tip badly, people think less of you. Tipping well is a chance to show off." Icelanders, by contrast, do not usually tip - a measure of their introversion and lackof neuroses, no doubt.
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