A model of hospitality students’ attitude toward and willingness to work with older adults

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to incorporate aspects of existing research to develop a model of hospitality students’ willingness to work with older adults. It evaluates whether the addition of multi-age perspective (MAP), a concept adapted from multi-cultural literature which addresses perceptions of different age groups, and separating attitudes into favorable and unfavorable constructs provide better predictive power than previous models. Design/methodology/approach A survey combining various measures suggested from the literature was conducted electronically with hospitality students from five US universities. Findings Factor analysis and structural equation modeling resulted in a model of the relationships between six latent constructs: contact quality, aging anxiety, MAP, unfavorable attitude, favorable attitude and willingness to work with older adults. While MAP and contact quality significantly influenced the respondents’ unfavorable and favorable attitudes, aging anxiety only affected their unfavorable attitude. Respondents’ MAP was the strongest antecedent for willingness to work with older adults, followed by favorable attitude and unfavorable attitude. Research limitations/implications The research investigated the beliefs of hospitality students studying in the USA and may not be representative of all younger hospitality workers and those in other countries. Practical implications Incorporating MAP into both educational and business contexts through methods such as intergenerational service learning, leadership commitment to age-diversity and reverse mentoring will facilitate cooperation and improved relations among younger and older hospitality workers. Originality/value This study is the first to apply the construct of MAP to hospitality and to separate the constructs of the influence of unfavorable attitudes from that of favorable attitudes.