Injunctive Norms Outperform Reciprocity: Tip Request Messages Can Increase Tipping Without Reducing Demand

Tip request messages are marketing communications that can help digital platforms balance customer spending with worker effort and compensation. We report the first field experiments testing how three appeals based on tipping motivations—injunctive norms (“It’s customary to leave a tip for the seller’s service”), personalized reciprocity, and impersonal reciprocity—affect tipping and future demand in a global freelance marketplace. Overall, the norms message increased tipping the most, and did so without reducing returning demand, showing that tip request messages can motivate customer tipping to better incentivize and compensate gig workers.