Discrimination in the Wedding Venue Business: Religion or Ethnicity?

Various studies have investigated the discrimination of ethnic and religious minorities on the labour and rental market, in the education system as well as in public administrations. While many of these studies found support for discrimination, we know little about the following question: To what extent is discrimination based on religious or ethnic grounds, or do the two maybe even reinforce each other? This study tries to disentangle religious and ethnic discrimination using a field experiment in the wedding venue business in nine cities across North, West, South and East Germany. Overall, 400 requests were sent out by e-mail. We randomly varied two traits (ethnic names and whether the wedding is religious or not). The first version of the e-mail contained a request by a couple with wide-spread Arabic names. The second version additionally contained the information that the couple would like to host an Islamic wedding at the venue. A couple with typical German names signed the third and the fourth version of the e-mail (control group). To the fourth e-mail, we added the information that the couple plans to celebrate a Free Church ceremony at the venue. Our analysis of this experiment shows that couples with Arabic names receive significantly less confirmations compared to couples with German names, no matter whether the religion was mentioned or not. In fact, planning a religious wedding does not further increase the ethnic penalty. We conclude by considering how characteristics of the venue (e.g., venue size and location) might moderate these results.