Effect of Beliefs About Weather Conditions on Tipping

Abstract

Research has shown that greater degrees of sunshine experienced directly are associated with greater amounts of compliance and tipping. This paper describes two studies that investigated beliefs about sunshine and tipping. The studies were conducted at a casino hotel in Atlantic City; a male server who delivered food and drinks to guests' rooms acted as the confederate. In Study 1, the server reported to guests the actual sky conditions: sunny, partly sunny, cloudy, or rainy. Tip percentages increased linearly from the worst to the best conditions. Study 2 used an experimental design. The server informed guests that the weather was either warm and sunny, cold and sunny, warm and rainy, or cold and rainy. Guests were gullible because their rooms shielded them from the actual conditions. Belief in sunny skies produced greater tip percentages. The temperature belief manipulation had no effect. This research extended previous research by showing that beliefs about weather, in addition to actual weather, can affect behavior.

Does Weather Actually Affect Tipping? An Empirical Analysis of Time‐Series Data1

“…Rather, they deal with how hypothetical or potential weather conditions affect tipping. In the first, Rind (1996) reports on a study conducted at a New Jersey hotel in rooms that did not have windows.…”

“…Cunningham finds a positive correlation between sunshine and tipping, concluding that pleasant weather conditions can promote helping behavior. Other experimental research has shown that inducing positive beliefs about present and future weather conditions (while actual current weather conditions are concealed by the researcher) results in higher tips (Rind, 1996;Rind, 2001). …”

Rainmakers: Why bad weather means good productivity.

“…Researchers have investigated the effect of weather on everyday phenomena, such as stock market returns (Saunders, 1993;Trombley, 1997;Hirshleifer and Shumway, 2003;Goetzmann and Zhu, 2005), tipping (Rind, 1996;Rind and Strohmetz, 2001), consumer spending (Murray, Di Muro, Finn, and Leszczyc, 2010), aggression in sports (Larrick et al, 2011), and willingness to help (Cunningham, 1979).…”

Clouds make nerds look good: field evidence of the impact of incidental factors on decision making

“…1 Cloud cover has often been studied as a natural manipulator of mood. Prior research, for example, has shown that sunshine increases tipping (Rind, 1996;Rind & Strohmetz, 2001), is positively correlated with returns in the stock-market (Hirshleifer & Shumway, 2003), and leads to increase of self-reported levels of happiness (Schwarz & Clore, 1983).…”