Keynote: The Psychology of Tipping

Event Overview

Consumers around the world often give voluntary sums of money, known as tips, to service providers in appreciation for their work. Although there are no reliable measures of global tipping, tips in the U.S. food and beverage industry alone are estimated to exceed $45 billion a year. Tips are more than small change, and their visibility and significance have grown with the advent of digital tipping. This shift has expanded both the number and types of services encouraging tips, as well as the size of the tips suggested.

Academic psychologists and other scholars have studied tipping for more than 50 years, yet much of this research remains locked away in academic journals inaccessible to the public. Join us for a special Keynote in which Professor Michael Lynn, a leading tipping researcher and author of “The Psychology of Tipping: Scientific Insights for Services Customers, Workers, and Managers,” shares what we know about the topic, including why people tip, who the best and worst tippers are, why some occupations are tipped and others are not, how norms vary across countries, and what factors influence tip size.

Professor Lynn’s expertise will benefit consumers navigating today’s complex and evolving expectations, tipped workers seeking to increase their incomes, managers aiming to improve employee morale and customer satisfaction, and academics interested in advancing our understanding of this fascinating behavior.

What You'll Learn

What tipped workers can do with insights into tipping behavior to turn everyday transactions into opportunities for higher earnings
Why consumers benefit from understanding tipping dynamics to make confident decisions about when, where, and how much to tip
Strategies service businesses can use to boost employee morale and customer satisfaction by refining their tipping culture
How managers can elevate service quality by aligning tipping norms with performance goals and guest experience standards

Speaker

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Michael Lynn

Michael D. Johnson and Family Professor of Services Marketing, Nolan School of Hotel Administration

Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Bio

Michael Lynn is a Professor of Services Marketing at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration. A former busboy, bartender, and waiter, Professor Lynn began studying tipping 40 years ago as a psychology graduate student and has now published over 80 scientific papers on the topic. His book, “The Psychology of Tipping: Scientific Insights for Services Customers, Workers, and Managers,” was recently published by Springer.

Professor Lynn’s research and opinions on tipping have been covered by numerous media outlets, including The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, as well as the Freakonomics Radio podcast, ABC’s 20/20, CNN’s Money Matters, and NPR’s All Things Considered, Planet Money, and Morning Edition.

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