When patrons become perpetrators: Examining the negative effects of customer incivility for Hospitality employees

Abstract

Employee turnover in the hotel industry is rampant and is one of its most significant challenges. Customer incivility is one of its prominent precipitators and therefore calls for an in-depth understanding of the hospitality context. Seeking affective events theory as a theoretical lens, the study seeks to understand how customer incivility creates a negative spiral for employees resulting in undesirable consequences like withdrawal behavior, retaliation, and turnover intention. The moderating role of perceived organizational support in these interactions to mitigate the negative consequences has been investigated. Data was collected from 348 employees working in hotels in the UK and USA and was analyzed using PLS-SEM. The findings of the research suggest that customer incivility leads to negative employee emotional reactions of employee withdrawal and retaliation, which contributes to their turnover intention. Perceived organizational support’s moderator effect was confirmed for the association between employee retaliation and turnover intentions, but not for employee withdrawal and turnover intentions. Implications are suggested based on the study findings for minimizing the damages of customer incivility in the hotel industry.