Ladies first? A field study of discrimination in coffee shops

Despite anecdotal and survey evidence suggesting the presence of discrimination against customers in stores, restaurants and other small-transaction consumer markets, few studies exist that identify or quantify the nature of any unequal treatment. We provide evidence from a field study of wait times in Boston-area coffee shops that suggests that female customers wait an average of 20 seconds longer for their orders than do male customers even when controlling for gender differences in orders. We find that this differential in wait times is inverse to the proportion of employees who are female and directly related to how busy the coffee shop is at the time of the order. This supports the conclusion that the observed differential is driven at least in part by employee animus and/or statistical discrimination rather than unobserved heterogeneity in the purchasing behaviour of female customers.

[1]  John A. List,et al.  Are the Disabled Discriminated Against in Product Markets? Evidence from Sportscards to Sportscars , 2004 .

[2]  Stephen L. Ross,et al.  Center for Policy Research Working Paper No . 24 NOW YOU SEE IT , NOW YOU DON ’ T : WHY DO REAL ESTATE AGENTS WITHHOLD AVAILABLE HOUSES FROM BLACK CUSTOMERS ? , 2022 .

[3]  J. List.  The nature and extent of discrimination in the marketplace: Evidence from the field , 2004 .

[4]  Peter Siegelman,et al.  Racial Discrimination in ‘Everyday’ Commercial Transactions: What Do We Know, What Do We Need to Know, and How Can We Find Out? , 1999 .

[5]  Ian Ayres.  Further Evidence of Discrimination in New Car Negotiations and Estimates of Its Cause , 1995 .

[6]  John Yinger,et al.  Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination , 1995 .

[7]  M. Turner,et al.  Patterns of racial steering in four metropolitan areas , 1992 .

[8]  Matt Parrett.  An Analysis of the Determinants of Tipping Behavior: A Laboratory Experiment and Evidence from Restaurant Tipping , 2006 .

[9]  Michael Lynn,et al.  The norm of restaurant tipping , 2003 .

[10]  Kathryn Graddy,et al.  Do Fast-Food Chains Price Discriminate on the Race and Income Characteristics of an Area? , 1997 .

[11]  Katherine A. Kiel,et al.  House Price Differentials in U.S. Cities: Household and Neighborhood Racial Effects ☆ , 1996 .

[12]  I. Ayres,et al.  Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car , 1995 .

[13]  William A. Luksetich,et al.  Why do diners tip: rule-of-thumb or valuation of service? , 2003 .

[14]  P. Goldberg.  Dealer Price Discrimination in New Car Purchases: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey , 1996, Journal of Political Economy.

[15]  C. Myers.  Discrimination and neighborhood effects: understanding racial differentials in US housing prices , 2004 .

[16]  I. Ayres.  Pervasive Prejudice?: Unconventional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination , 2001 .

[17]  J. Andreoni,et al.  Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism , 2001 .

[18]  I. Ayres.  Fair Driving: Gender and Race Discrimination in Retail Car Negotiations , 1991 .

[19]  Heather Antecol,et al.  Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in Local Consumer Markets: Exploiting the Army's Procedures for Matching Personnel to Duty Locations , 2006 .

[20]  J. Yinger,et al.  Measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits: caught in the Act. , 1986 .

[21]  J. Yinger,et al.  Evidence on Discrimination in Consumer Markets , 1998 .

[22]  D. N. Chambers.  The racial housing price differential and racially transitional neighborhoods , 1992 .