Customer incivil behavior and employee retaliation
International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences
ISSN: 1756-669X
Article publication date: 28 March 2022
Issue publication date: 10 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine a moderated mediation relationship between customer incivility and employee retaliation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study tested the hypotheses using data from 459 hospitality industry employee responses. Data was collected by using Amazon’s MTurk.
Findings
The study results suggest that employee anger mediates the customer incivility and employee retaliation relationship. Further, the employee’s regulatory focus (namely, promotion and preventive regulatory focus) moderates this mediated relationship. Specifically, employee promotion regulatory focus positively moderates the relationship between customer incivility and employee anger, whereas prevention regulatory focus negatively moderates the relationship.
Originality/value
Extant study has not explored customer incivility and employee retaliation relationship under moderated mediation influence of regulatory focus and employee anger, respectively.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by grants from Penn State Harrisburg.
Citation
Agnihotri, A. and Bhattacharya, S. (2022), "Customer incivil behavior and employee retaliation", International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 442-464. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQSS-09-2021-0137
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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