“Add Tip?”: American Tipping Culture and Digital Suggested Gratuity in Counter Service

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the formation of digital tipping culture in American counter service establishments through an ethnographic study conducted in Princeton, New Jersey. I begin by situating tipping within its broader historical, legal, and economic contexts, tracing how it evolved into a normalized component of the American service economy. Using participant observation, interviews, and classical theoretical frameworks, I examine how digital point-of-sale systems have reconfigured tipping as an economic ritualized interaction shaped by cultural pathways, reciprocity, morality, and social relations. I argue that while tipping appears as a voluntary expression of gratitude, it is structurally embedded in labor relations and shaped by power asymmetries across customers, tipped employees, and managers. By foregrounding the screen as both prompt and agent, I trace how digital infrastructure reshapes the emotional, economic, and symbolic dimensions of tipping. My analysis centers not on the “correct” way to tip, but outlines digital counter service tipping as a culture in formation, where social and moral negotiations occur within everyday transactions – those brief yet loaded moments where people must decide whether and how to tip.