(NEXSTAR) – Are you “guilt-tipping” more than the average American?
In recent years, consumers across the country have increasingly encountered digital payment screens at coffee shops, retail outlets or quick-service restaurants. And often, many of those screens are prompting customers to leave a tip — sometimes even at self-serve establishments.
“Am I crazy or is all of this out of control?” one Reddit user complained earlier this year, after allegedly being prompted to tip 18% at a self-serve candy shop and a self-serve convenience kiosk.
These tip screens aren’t likely to go away anytime soon, either. But Americans are making some slight progress in not feeling so guilty about refusing to play along, the results of a recent survey suggest.
A survey of 2,000 adult Americans, conducted by Talker Research, indicates that Americans are feeling less guilty about skipping the tip screen. And when they do tip, they’re tipping less than they had in 2024.
The average survey respondent felt pressured to tip — or “guilt-tipped” — about 4.2 times per month, according to the survey. That’s down from the 6.3 times per month that poll participants “guilt-tipped” per month in 2024, Talker Research found.
The average participant also estimated that they’ll guilt-tip an extra $283.20 in 2025 — down from an average of $453.60 in 2024. (Talker Research asked respondents to estimate how much they felt they had overtipped under pressure within the last 30 days, and multiplied the results by 12 to get their yearly estimate.)
“When asked generally about their tipping in 2025, over a fifth (22%) say they now tip less across the board,” Talker Research wrote of its findings.
Despite these changing habits, many Americans still feel like they’re being pressured to tip at undeserving establishments, the polling group determined. Just under half (48%) said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that they’re increasingly being pressured to tip more than they would normally. And 20% indicated that they “often” or “always” did so.
Speaking with Nexstar during the pandemic, when digital payment screens were becoming more common, Michael Lynn, a professor of marketing and management communication at Cornell University, said people who feel pressured to tip generally harbored anger toward the businesses.
“People think it’s manipulative, they resent it, and their perceptions of service go down,” Lynn said, citing a study from researchers at Purdue and Temple Universities.
So why do companies continue to use these screens? Maybe because studies have shown that it works more often than it doesn’t, or because it helps to recruit employees who wouldn’t otherwise be happy with their hourly wages.
Etiquette expert Diane Gottsman, the founder of the Protocol School of Texas, also once told Nexstar that customers who feel pressured to tip should evaluate their service before deciding whether or not to do so. At restaurants, for example, servers are likely making less than minimum wage and gratuities help augment their income. In most other situations, tipping, while a courteous gesture, isn’t “socially mandatory,” but rather a nice gesture for good service.
Americans may also want to get comfortable with newer tipping practices sooner rather than later, because those screens probably aren’t going anywhere.
“We are subjected to that app, that screen, almost every day when we buy a coffee or a sandwich,” Gottsman said. “So we have to get used to this form of payment.”
