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The purpose of this paper is to suggest a novel framework of consumer confusion based on the appraisal theories of emotions. Extant theoretical and empirical evidence on confusion continues to be vague on the connection between the emotional dimensions and behavioural consequences. The appraisal theories of emotions can help to expand the field of inquiry which is related to the topic of consumer confusion.

A concept-centric review of 112 publications on consumer confusion and research on emotions provides an integrative critical analysis of the nature of confusion and extends the literature. The review demonstrates that past research has advanced the understanding but not sufficiently explained all of the processes implicated in consumer confusion.

On the above grounds, the paper suggests that although confusion is environmentally driven, it can be seen as a dynamic process implicating two levels of consumer appraisals. Uncertainty/lack of understanding, goal inconsistency and motivational state form the basis of confusion; agency attribution and coping potential are, however, shaping the development of subsequent emotions and ultimately the expectations on consumer behaviour. Considered as a dynamic process, confusion has coping and behavioural implications. At the most central level, the importance of agency (or attribution) and coping potential is highlighted and the way these appraisals lead to different emotions and behaviours is discussed.

The paper advances extant consumer decision-making literature and proposes diverse emotions that are associated with the experience of confusion, behaviours that are expected, along with marketing implications and actions required for each of them.

Professional touching behavior (PTB), defined as intentional touching behavior that occurs between organizational members and that falls within the boundaries of appropriateness and professionalism in the workplace, is prevalent in organizations. Scholars from multiple disciplines, including human resources researchers, have acknowledged the importance of physical contact for facilitating interpersonal communication and relationship-building. However, PTB may not only elicit positive reactions from those who receive it but also negative reactions as well, with implications for social dynamics in organizations. PTB can, on the one hand, fulfill employees’ desires for interpersonal connection; at the same time, such physical contact at work can represent a threat to employees’ health. To explain the nature and implications of these divergent effects of receiving PTB, the authors draw upon sociometer theory and behavioral immune system (BIS) theory to model the emotional, cognitive, and physiological processes via which, and the conditions under which, receiving such behavior will result in socially functional responses and prompt subsequent prosocial behavior, and when PTB will be perceived as a health risk and prompt withdrawal behavior. The theoretical framework of this chapter expands our conceptual understanding of the consequences of interpersonal physical contact at work and has important human resources management (HRM) implications for organizational managers.

Currently, most research studies focus on ownership reforms and governance reforms, while only a few research studies focus on management system innovations. Based on an evolution of state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) performance appraisal systems, this paper investigates the influence of performance appraisal system on earnings management.

Using a natural experiment that central government-owned enterprises (CGOEs) carried out economic value-added performance appraisal (EVA-PA) in 2010, the authors adapt difference-in-difference method to analyze the relationship between EVA-PA and earnings management choice. Furthermore, the authors consider the situation which contained financial status, separation between decision-making rights and decision-control rights, separation between ownership and control and industrial characteristics.

The research finds that after carrying out EVA-PA, CGOEs prefer accrual-based earnings management to real earnings management, and there is substitution effect between the two types of earnings management. Moreover, further research studies reveal that enterprises suffering losses in the previous year and featuring higher separation between decision-making rights and decision-control rights and higher separation between ownership and control have stronger earnings management motive under EVA-PA. In contrast, enterprises achieving satisfactory financial performance in the previous year and engaging in businesses within protective industry have weaker earnings management motive under EVA-PA. After the implementation of EVA-PA, accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management both impair operating performances of CGOEs.

Theoretically, this paper enriches research studies on earnings management from the perspective of incentive mechanism and expands research studies on economic consequences of EVA-PA. In addition, it validates the relationship between the two types of earnings management. As an important mechanism of corporate management and control, performance appraisal system is an important part for establishing ownership management system and improving internal management system of SOEs.

To clarify inconsistencies in the emotion elicitation process and to suggest avenues for advancing emotion research, this study aims to conduct a systematic review of emotion research in the subject area of hospitality and tourism management.

This study analyzes 178 emotion-related articles published in 37 journals from 2004–2019 in the context of hospitality and tourism, providing a systematic synthesis of publication outlets and trajectories, research settings, the conceptualization of emotion, emotion measurement, classifications of antecedents and consequences.

Regarding the elicitation of emotions, many studies ignore the developments in emotion research in the mainstream discipline and still consider external stimuli as the direct causes of emotion. Numerous studies conceptualize customer emotion as positive or negative, which overlooks the nuances between discrete emotions with the same valence. Additionally, emotion scales are largely borrowed from psychology without considering the specific characteristics of the hospitality and tourism context. Methodologically, most studies take a single-measure lens with either a self-report, physiological or expression behavior measure.

The analysis of the literature highlights three main areas for future emotion studies in the hospitality and tourism context.

Previous reviews are narrative and only address specific areas of interest, rendering them incapable of explaining how a systematic literature identification process was conducted. The present systematic review is among the first to provide an overview of emotion studies in hospitality and tourism over a 15-year period. By drawing insights from appraisal theories of emotions, this review addresses common misunderstandings concerning the emotion elicitation process in the current hospitality and tourism literature.

Organizations must base success on consumer retention predicated on the consumer's desire to repurchase. Some organizations, such as those providing emotionally charged and complex services in the performing arts, find this difficult. Knowledge of the role of emotions in customer judgments is negligible. The relationship of core service quality and peripheral quality on repurchase intent is also understudied. This paper aims to model and test the interrelationship of these constructs in predicting repurchase intention in a performing arts context.

A survey instrument tailored to the performing arts was administered to a sample of 250 past and present performing arts audience members, with responses examined using structural equation modeling.

Results indicate repurchase intention is largely based on satisfaction mediated by perceived value. Core service quality, appraisal emotion and peripheral service quality influence perceived value for time and money, with core service quality and peripheral service quality in turn influencing appraisal emotion. Appraisal emotion directly affects customer satisfaction but has no direct relationship to repurchase intention. Peripheral service quality, however, directly affects repurchase intention.

Evidence suggests expansion of the strategic focus to include peripheral services in order to maximize repurchase. Core service quality, (the act) affects repurchase intent through an indirect path mediated by appraisal emotion, which does not directly influence repurchase intent. Appraisal emotions are influential in determining perceived value.

This is the first known paper combining this system of relationships including the influence and role of appraisal emotion in the performing arts context.

Rumors about products and brands are common occurrence in the marketplace. Often these rumors are shared among consumers using the word of mouth channel. The spread of these rumors is fast and can lead to significant consequences to products and brands. The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of such rumor sharing behavior among consumers. Specifically, this paper investigates the role of positive affect and negative affect in rumor sharing behavior. Three key rumor characteristics (valence, involvement and credibility) are explored as antecedents to positive affect and negative affect.

The paper collects data from 236 respondents using Amazon MTurk, and conducts a PLS–SEM analysis to explore the role of positive affect and negative affect in rumor sharing contexts.

Both positive affect and negative affect were found to be significant factors leading to rumor sharing, furthermore positive affect was found to have a stronger influence on rumor sharing as compared to negative affect. The study also delineates the role of valence, involvement and credibility in rumor sharing scenarios, all of which have a strong role in shaping positive affect and negative affect.

The study is novel in using cognitive appraisal theory to illustrate the formation of positive affect and negative affect in rumor encounters. The study conclusively illustrates the role of cognitive appraisal and emotional experiences in the rumor propagation context, and advances the marketing scholarship’s understanding significantly.

This research aims to examine the cognitive appraisals of frontline employees (FLEs) when dealing with aggressive customers and the impact on their well-being, as well as several moderator effects, in a collectivist, Eastern culture.

A critical incident technique reveals the cognitive appraisal of FLEs who had recently experienced customer aggression. Data were collected through qualitative, in-depth interviews with 35 FLEs in customer-facing roles in Thailand.

The FLEs perceived threats to self-esteem, physical well-being, goal completion at work, fairness or equity and sense of control when dealing with customer aggression. These cognitive appraisals affected their psychological well-being in the form of negative affectivity, anxiety, depression and stress. Importantly, factors that moderate (exacerbate or weaken) the impact of customer aggression on cognitive appraisal, and cognitive appraisal on psychological well-being were revealed, including “customer is always right” philosophy, social status, public versus private context and social support.

Organisations should pay more attention to FLEs’ psychological well-being and how they interpret and deal with customers’ misbehaviour and aggression. The research identifies factors that moderate the impact of customer aggression on psychological well-being.

This is the first empirical paper that has examined how FLEs cope with customer aggression in a collectivist, south-east Asian context where social norms calibrate FLEs’ responses to customer aggression. It is also the first research that adopts a contingency approach to understanding how FLEs cope with customer aggression – i.e. when faced with customer aggression, under what contingency conditions do FLEs cognitive appraisals have a stronger or weaker impact on their psychological well-being?

Extant research on job insecurity has traditionally investigated this construct as a hindrance stressor, based on theoretical developments and meta-analytical results that have shown consistent negative relationships between job insecurity and a host of organizational outcomes. In this chapter, the authors take a person-centered perspective based on the transactional theory of stress and argue that employees can and do appraise job insecurity in different ways which is manifested by qualitatively distinct latent profiles. The authors also argue that certain positive psychological variables (i.e., hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and grit) might influence one’s odds to belong to specific appraisal latent classes. Using a cross-lagged dataset of 322 US-based employees, the authors found evidence of five qualitatively different latent profiles (i.e., employees who viewed job insecurity as: (1) irrelevant, (2) simultaneously moderately challenging and hindering, (3) primarily hindering, (4) both highly challenging and highly hindering, or (5) primarily challenging). Further, the results showed that higher grit was associated with higher odds of belonging to any of the appraisal profiles compared to the high challenge/high hindrance group whereas higher self-efficacy was associated with higher odds of belonging to the irrelevant group compared to any of the appraisal profiles. Hope and optimism, however, did not influence latent class membership. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice considering seemingly paradoxical findings demonstrating sometimes positive and sometimes negative outcomes of job insecurity, as well as traditional assumptions that employees primarily view job insecurity as either a hindrance or a challenge.

This chapter seeks to make the case that emotions are central in organising in schools and that the way members of staff oversee their emotion processes is crucial to the legitimacy of the institution. The logic of the case is simple, as follows. There are three forms of affect: feelings, moods and emotions. Feelings and moods are affective states, the description of which depicts our inner world. Emotions are very different. They entail a process in which an event of some kind is experienced and appraised. This appraisal results in physiological responses, psychological changes and social responses, which entail actions. The emotion process creates a state of action readiness and a motivation to act. The actions are manifestations of power and they may influence those who experience them. Because actions influence, they are leadership actions and are therefore central to organising processes. Actions may have a high affective content and may be experienced as an individual ‘emoting’, which typically increases the significance of the action experienced by others. Emoting can therefore change the influencing effect of an action. We may seek to defend ourselves from actions with a high affective content by means of social defences, which can take various forms. The social actions resulting from the emotion process and emoting are subject to a whole range of ‘rules’: personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural. How well members of the school staff understand and oversee – manage – that emotion process in relation to these rules is crucial to the legitimacy of schools as institutions.