• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.486-496
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• 2018

Customer incivility is an important stress factor employees performing service tasks, and this is equally true for employees who perform civil affairs services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the negative effects of adverse customer behavior and ways to reduce it. This study adopts the Conservation of Resource (COR) theory in order to examine customer incivility. This study predicts that customer incivility will negative emotions and eventually lead to emotional exhaustion in employees. We also predict that social support (organizational support, supervisor support, coworker support) perceived by employees would moderate the relationship between customer incivility and negative emotions. This study is based on 481 questionnaires collected from public officials. The results are as follows: First, customer incivility causes negative emotions. Second, negative emotions mediate the relationship between customer incivility and emotional exhaustion. Third, the relationship between customer incivility and negative emotions showed moderating effects on the perception of organizational support which is one of three types of social support. Based on the results of this study, implications, limitations, and future direction of research are suggested.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.107-118
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• 2019

Purpose - The present study examines the effect of service employees' experienced customer incivility through their emotional exhaustion. We identified service employees' emotion regulation ability as a boundary condition (i.e., moderating variable) that decreased the positive relationship between service employees' experienced customer incivility and their emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, we also investigated the negative relationship between service employees' experienced customer incivility and their service performance via emotional exhaustion. Research design, data, and methodology - Drawing on AET (affective event theory) and COR (conservation of resources) theory, we developed three research hypotheses (i.e., mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation). Online panel survey data from 552 frontline employees at several service organizations (e.g., department stores, retail stores, hotels, restaurants, airlines, banking, insurance company, and etc) in South Korea were examined. To assess two types of validity (i.e., convergent and discriminant validity) and reliability of measurement model, we employed the CFA (confirmatory factor analysis) using M-plus 8.2 software. Internal consistency also was tested by Cronbach' α. In addition, we employed the SPSS PROCESS MACRO 2.16, which was recommended by Hayes (2013, 2015), to estimate mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation effects. Results - As predicted, the negative relationship between service employees' experienced customer incivility and their service performance was mediated by emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, service employees' emotion regulation ability also played a significant moderating role of the relationship between service employees' experienced customer incivility and emotional exhaustion, such that this relationship was less pronounced when service employees had a high level of their emotion regulation ability than when thir emotion regulation ability was low. Service employees' emotion regulation ability further moderated this mediation effect of service employees' experienced customer incivility on service performance through emotional exhaustion. These findings have theoretical implications for employees' experienced customer incivility and emotion regulation ability research and provide managerial implications for practitioners. Conclusions - This study empirically elaborated the previous model of service employees' experienced customer incivility and personal resource (e.g., emotion regulation ability) literature by presenting the findings that service employees' experienced customer incivility influences their service performance via emotional exhaustion and that emotion regulation ability effectively reduces this negative effect.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.110-117
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• 2017

This study intended to examine transitive relation among customer incivility perceived by deluxe hotel frontline employees, burnout, and deviant workplace behaviors and clarify the moderating effect of employees' stress. A total of 230 employees working in deluxe hotels in Seoul, the capital of Korea, in 2017 comprised the sample in this study. The hypothesized relationships in the model were tested simultaneously by using structural equation modelling (SEM). As results, customer incivility perceived by deluxe hotel frontline employees had significant (p<.001) positive influence on their burnout(${\beta}=.38$, t-value=4.93). Employees' burnout positively influenced their deviant workplace behaviors (${\beta}=.56$, t-value=7.22). In addition, customer incivility was found to positively affect employees' deviant workplace behaviors(${\beta}=.26$, t-value=3.90), and therefore, the moderating role of stress level was not verified. The findings of this study suggested that deluxe hotels are supposed to enhance their frontline service by providing orientation for customers through promotion materials. Limitations and future research directions of this study were also well established and discussed.