A Study on Antecedent Variables for Emotional Labor

The purpose of this study is to verify antecedent variables that affect emotional labor. The results are as follows. First, display rules positively affected deep acting and negatively affected surface acting. Second, customer contact time positively affected deep acting but did not affect surface acting. Third, the interaction between display rules and customer contact time did not have significant effects on surface acting but negatively affected deep acting. The implications based on these results are as follows. First, theoretically, this study extends the range of leading variables that affect emotional labor and verifies the moderation effects between these variables. Next, practically, this study suggests that presenting harmonious criteria with regards to display rules and customer contact time that fit well into the concept of food service company is a very useful tool to manage emotional labor of the employees. The limitation of this study is that the causal relationship between variables demonstrated in this study cannot be generalized due to convenience sampling and cross sectional research.