Tableside Justice: Racial Differences in Retributive Reactions to Dissatisfaction

Existing evidence indicates that racial discrimination is a common, if not pervasive, feature of Black Americans’ experiences in U.S. consumer markets. However, few studies have quantitatively explored specific social psychological and interactional consequences of consumer racial discrimination. In response, we draw from literatures on experiences, attributions, and reactions to racial discrimination to posit and test for Black-White differences in consumers’ behavioral responses to dissatisfactory dining experiences. Specifically, past research shows that Black Americans’ dissatisfactory experiences in consumer markets are more often perceived to be the result of consumer racial discrimination. Given their increased exposure to racial discrimination in consumer markets and the United States more broadly, we posit that Black customers will react more punitively to dissatisfactory restaurant experiences than White customers. We test this notion using a within-subject experimental design and regression ana...