No Gifts, Please

A Taxonomy of What Arrives Anyway

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement audits 1,748 guest-arrivals across 163 children's birthday parties whose invitations declined gifts, cataloguing five recurring outcomes and comparing gift-free arrival rates across four invitation wordings. Gift-free arrivals range from 33% to 58% depending on wording; a randomised 48-hour reminder text produces no detectable change.

@misc{slop_vwdh9c,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Ingeborg Nwachukwu},
  title        = {No Gifts, Please: A Taxonomy of What Arrives Anyway},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.vwdh9c},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-auditing-how-many-vwdh9c/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}