What is the incentive for including transactions in a block? I've been doing research in trying to answer this question and haven't found a good answer yet. I was wondering what is the incentive for miners to include a transaction in a block when mining bitcoin? Since it's a race to solve the proof of work problem, why wouldn't miners just leave the block empty to save time? 

The reward for mining the block is much bigger than the transaction fee(s) so it doesn't seem to make sense to me to waste time validating transactions for the block just to accumulate small transaction fees. If anyone can provide an answer, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Three reasons:


Leaving the block empty doesn't save any time. They still hash however many times a second they hash.
Transaction fees make up a significant fraction of the mining reward today. Such a miner would be foolish.
Miners have invested in expensive hardware that is valuable only if bitcoins remain valuable. If too many miners mine empty blocks, confirmation times will go up and the usefulness of the network will be diminshed.