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Inspired by the dynamic changes in our daily lives enabled via quantified-self technologies and the urgent need for more studies on the human-computer interaction design mechanisms adopted by these applications, this study explores the value of user affective experience mirroring and examines the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification in a psychological self-help system (PSS) that aids people in work stress relief.

Based on an analysis of the existing systems and theories in relevant fields, we conducted mixed-method research, involving semi-structured interviews, experience sampling experiments and user bio data triangulations, to identify the benefits of user affective experience mirroring and examine the impact of visual impact metaphor–based (VIM) meaningful gamification on PSS users.

For a gamified PSS, users generally perceive VIM as arousing more feelings of enjoyment, empathy, trust and usefulness, empowering them to gain more mastery and control over their emotional well-beings, especially with relieving their occupational stress and upbringing their level of perceived happiness. Overtime, VIM-based meaningful gamification further boosts such value of a PSS.

Weaving together meaningful gamification and psychological empowerment theories, the results emphasized that successful empowerment of user through gamification in PSSs relies heavily on whether a deeper and meaningful affective connection can be established with the users, in short, “meaningful gamification for psychological empowerment”. Such an understanding, as demonstrated in our research framework, also sheds light on the design theories for persuasive technology and human influence tactics during human computer interactions.

The results of the study demonstrate to practitioners how to make the best use of gamification strategies to deeply relate to and resonate with users. Even without complicated game-play design, meaningful gamification mechanisms, such as VIM facilitate the empowerment of users while gaining their appreciation, establishing a deeper connection with them and eventually generating persuasive effects on intended future behavioural outcomes.

The effective management of work-related stress with handy tools such as a VIM-based PSS can be beneficial for many organizations and, to a large extent, the society.

This study proposed and empirically demonstrated the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification for PSS users. In this cross-disciplinary study, theories from different research domains were synthesized to develop a more thorough and multi-faceted understanding of the optimal design strategies for emerging information systems like this VIM-based PSS.

The purpose of this study is to pilot test the effectiveness of the experience sampling approach for measuring employee satisfaction with the workplace environment. Additionally, the authors also aimed to explore, which aspects of environmental comfort have the strongest impact on momentary well-being and productivity.

In total, 15 knowledge workers in an open-plan office environment were sent a brief survey (measuring environmental comfort, momentary well-being and perceived productivity) each day over an 11-day study period and provided 78 individual survey responses in total.

All but one of the measures on the survey had low test-retest reliability, indicating that employees’ experiences of environmental comfort varied significantly each time they completed the survey. Additionally, higher environmental comfort was associated with improved well-being and productivity.

The results suggest that an experience sampling approach to the workplace occupant survey is justified to better capture the temporal variability in experiences of environmental comfort. The results also suggest that improving environmental comfort, particularly by reducing the level of distractions, will enable employees to work more productively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first field study which has attempted to directly address limitations in traditional occupant surveys by using an experience sampling approach rather than a one-time-only questionnaire.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a pilot study of the emotional states associated with educational leadership students’ attempts at problem solving “on the fly” in their schools and organizations.

Experience sampling methodology (ESM) was used to study 375 “problem-perceiving moments” in leadership students using iPod touches, followed by individual cognitive interviews (CIs).

Students reported higher levels of intrinsic motivation and cognitive engagement when solving new vs old problems. Students experienced both more positive and more negative emotions when attempting to problem solve than when reporting that they were not solving problems, yet lower levels of self-efficacy coupled with insufficient time to reflect on their leadership goals while at work. Consistent with previous research, students reported engaging in metacognitive and reflective activities more frequently while with supervisors and colleagues. In the CIs, students’ narrative descriptions generally supported the quantitative analysis. For example, students described “putting out fires,” and discussed multi-tasking as a deterrent to problem solving. They also talked about balancing the emotional “highs and lows” throughout their day as well as the role of social affirmation in the problem solving process.

While the limitations of this small pilot study include a small sample using self-report data, the implications for educational leadership faculty are to explicitly integrate psychological research into leadership courses to expand students’ knowledge of creative problem solving and focus on building their self-efficacy.

Even though students might not perceive they are good at problem solving, faculty can help them learn how to regulate their emotions and create teamwork conditions for constructively vetting problems. In turn, this kind of instruction and research can enhance leadership students’ persistence as problem solvers, which may help prevent leadership burnout and turnover.

Performance pressure is unavoidable in the career of any frontline employee in the service industry, yet the authors have little understanding of the dualistic nature of performance pressure. This study aims to distinguish between challenge performance pressures and hindrance performance pressure and to investigate the effect of challenge/hindrance performance pressure on in-role/extra-role service performance through distinct emotional-labor-strategy mechanisms.

Study 1 conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and developed a performance pressure scale. To test the predictive validity of this scale, Study 2 used data from 178 frontline employees based on diary and experience sampling spanning 18 consecutive calendar days.

Findings revealed that surface/deep acting mediated the relationship between hindrance/challenge performance pressure and in-role/extra-role service performance. Calling moderated the relationship between emotional labor and service performance. The relationship between surface acting and in-role service performance was weaker in the higher calling condition, whereas the relationship between deep acting and extra-role service performance was weaker in the higher calling condition.

Service organizations should motivate employees to preserve more challenge performance pressure rather than hindrance performance pressure through establishing a reasonable performance target system. Furthermore, organizations can encourage employees to provide more extra-role services for customers through establishing an emotional support system, so as to enhance customer satisfaction.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a pioneering effort to develop a dualistic performance pressure scale and explore the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of performance pressure on service performance in the presence of emotional labor.

Based on revenge theory and the three objectives of social interaction theory of aggression, the purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to answer why and when a subordinate’s own behaviour instigates abuse at the workplace. In particular, the authors argue that subordinate gossip behaviour instils in supervisors a thought of revenge towards that subordinate, which, in turn, leads to abusive supervision. Specifically, this hypothesised relationship is augmented when the supervisor feels close to the gossiper (i.e. psychological proximity).

The authors conducted two independent studies to test the moderated mediation model, which collectively investigate why and when subordinate gossip behaviour provokes abusive supervision in the workplace. A lagged study (i.e. Study 1: 422 supervisors and subordinates) in a large retail company and an experience sampling study (i.e. Study 2: 96 supervisors and subordinates with 480 daily surveys) in multiple organisations provide support for the moderated mediation model.

The two-study (i.e. a lagged study and an experience sampling study) findings support the integrated model, which has mainly focussed on instrumental consideration of abusive supervision that influences the supervisor–subordinate relationship.

The two-study investigation has important and meaningful implications for abusive supervision research because it determines that subordinate gossip behaviour is more threating to a supervisor when the subordinate and the supervisor are psychological close to each other than when they are not. That is because when they are close, the supervisor is not expecting gossip behaviour from the subordinate, thus giving rise to an abusive workplace.

BEFORE the war Japanese industry concentrated on the production of large quantities of cheap articles. Today it is so quality‐conscious that every week there is a Government broadcast to the whole nation to stress to workers and management the fact that quality control is the business of everybody. The six countries which comprise the Common Market are equally pressing ahead with the same subject, intent upon supplying the customer with what he requires at the price he is ready to pay.

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory and emotional contagion perspective, this study aims to propose that customer mistreatment has an indirect effect on subsequent customer mistreatment by triggering high levels of surface acting. In other words, there is a vicious circle formed as a result of customer mistreatment and surface acting. This paper further argues that emotional regulation and conscientiousness are effective in breaking this vicious circle.

An experience sampling study was conducted on 97 frontline service employees in a hotel chain’s restaurants in China, with two daily surveys for ten consecutive days. Multilevel path analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that employees experiencing customer mistreatment in the morning would adopt the surface acting strategy more frequently in the afternoon, which in turn induces more customer mistreatment in the afternoon. Further, this indirect effect can be mitigated by high (versus low) levels of emotional regulation and conscientiousness.

Recently, there has been growing recognition of the vital links between customer mistreatment and negative employee outcomes. However, these studies have failed to consider the carryover effect of customer mistreatment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first pioneer study on whether and how customer mistreatment can affect subsequent instances of customer mistreatment, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of customer mistreatment.

This study aims to provide researchers in hospitality management with a comprehensive understanding of the experience sampling method (ESM) and to engage them in the use of ESM in their future research. With this critical discussion of the advantages and challenges of the method, researchers can apply it appropriately to deepen and broaden their research findings.

This study chooses an empirical example in the context of hotel employees’ surface acting, tiredness and sleep quality to illustrate the application of ESM. Based on the example, this paper conducts a two-level modeling in Mplus, including a cross-level mediation analysis and mean centering.

This paper demonstrates the applicability and usefulness of ESM for hospitality research and provides a detailed demonstration of how to use the statistical program Mplus to analyze ESM data. With this paper, researchers will be able to consider how to engage ESM in their future studies.

To the best of the authors‘ knowledge, this paper is among the first to provide a hands-on demonstration of ESM to hospitality researchers. The authors call for more research in hospitality management to use ESM to answer complex and pressing research questions.

Experience sampling methods (ESM) have enabled researchers to capture intensive longitudinal data and how worker well-being changes over time. The conceptual advances in understanding the variability of well-being are discussed. These emerging forms in the literature include affective inertia, affective variability, affective reactivity, and density distributions. While most ESM research has relied on the active provision of data by participants (i.e., self-reports), technological advances have enabled different forms of passive sensing that are useful for assessing and tracking well-being and its contextual factors. These include accelerometer data, location data, and physiological data. The strengths and weaknesses of passively sensed data and future ways forward are discussed, where the use of both active and passive forms of ESM data in the assessment and promotion of worker well-being is expected.

In this chapter, we review empirical research evidence on the relationship between stressors and catecholamines (i.e., adrenaline and noradrenaline) and cortisol. With respect to acute stressors, both laboratory and field research have shown that the exposure to stressors leads to an increase in catecholamine and cortisol levels. With respect to more chronic stressors, research evidence is less consistent. Chronic mental workload was found to be related to elevated adrenaline levels. With respect to cortisol responses the interaction between workload and other variables seems to play a role. Empirical studies suggest that chronic stressors affect the responsivity to acute stressors. Research showed that after the exposure to stressors catecholamine and cortisol recovery is delayed.