A student at Yale named Elizabeth Campbell sent me a paper reporting the results of an innovative field experiment she conducted. Campbell's study evaluated the effects of displaying one's political preferences on the service in New Haven restaurants by randomly assigning customers to wear different campaign buttons. The resulting service was evaluated with respect to several metrics of timeliness as well as whether the server attempted to return a "lost" letter left on the table containing $3 in cash and the customer's contact information.
While Campbell's empirical results are somewhat ambiguous, it's striking that undergraduates are now carrying out field experiments -- the methodology only came into widespread use among political scientists in the last five to ten years (largely as a result of the efforts of Yale's Donald Green, who advised Campbell, and his colleague Alan Gerber). Hopefully this is an indication that the experimental revolution is moving forward...
I'd love to see an experiment the other way around: How do customers tip if a waiter is wearing a political pin?
Posted by: Ben | January 14, 2009 at 09:26 PM