Restaurant server income is predominantly composed of tips received from guests and the minimum server wage received from restaurants. Grounded in equity theory, this dissertation investigated the effect of the minimum server wage, in combination with established antecedents of voluntary tipping, on tipping rate and examined guest perceptions of fairness of the minimum server wage and three prevalent tipping policies (voluntary tipping, automatic service charge, and service inclusive pricing). Two experiments were conducted, a 2 (minimum server wage) x 2 (service quality) experimental design, and a 2 (minimum server wage) x 3 (tipping policy) experimental design. The results revealed that the minimum server wage and voluntary tipping familiarity have moderating roles on the indirect effect of service quality on tipping rate via perceived fairness of voluntary tipping. In addition, voluntary tipping has higher perceived fairness and higher perceived value than automatic service charge and service inclusive pricing
