The Social Norm of Tipping: A Review

Tipping is an important phenomenon, both because of its economic magnitude and because of the insights it suggests about economic behavior in general. It is closely related to several areas in economics, including labor economics, industrial organization, social economics, behavioral economics, and public policy. Unfortunately, no published article integrates and synthesizes the research on tipping. This makes it hard for scholars to get an overview of this research area without reading dozens of articles. The purpose of this article is therefore to give the readers the state of the art in the research on tipping. In addition to summarizing and synthesizing the previous research on tipping, the article includes many original ideas and suggests topics for future research.