Field Experiments on Everyday Discrimination

Two field experiments involving 7,375 hotels investigated everyday discrimination. First, we explored which ascriptive categories affected the quality of information individuals were willing to share (Experiment 1). We emailed hotels from one of twelve fictitious email accounts (varying race, gender, and status) asking for local restaurant recommendations. Hotel representatives’ email responses revealed racial discrimination along three dimensions of quality: responsiveness, helpfulness, and rapport. Second, we examined whether signaling one’s market value by making customer status explicit could reduce discrimination (Experiment 2). Indeed, communicating information-seekers’ intention to stay at the hotel improved the quality of information shared. Combining experimental data with archival data suggests that Asians receive poorer treatment than black information-seekers due to both racial and anti-foreign bias. Our findings both provide the first causal test of everyday discrimination and contribute to nascent research on interventions that individuals can utilize to preempt discrimination.