Tobias Regner

We analyse pricing, e¤ort and tipping decisions in the online service 'Google
Answers'. While users set a price for the answer to their question ex ante, they
can additionally give a tip to the researcher ex post.
In line with the related experimental literature we …find evidence that tipping
is motivated by reciprocity, but also by reputation concerns among frequent
users. Moreover, researchers seem to adjust their effort based on the user's
previous tipping behaviour. An efficient sorting takes place when enough tip
history is available. Users known for tipping in the past receive higher effort
answers, while users with an established reputation for non-tipping tend to get
low effort answers.
In addition, we analyse how tipping is adopted when the behavioural default
is not to tip and estimate minimum levels for the fraction of genuine reciprocator
and imitator types.