Customer incivility and employees' outcomes in the hotel: Testing the mediating role of emotional exhaustion

Abstract

A logical position emphasized by the service-oriented organizations that 'the customer is always right' and the organizational policies that requires employees to make customer happy, even in situations involving customer uncivil behavior has continued to be one of the antecedents of employees' negative outcomes. Applying the conservation of resources theory (COR), the current study develops and tests a research model that investigates the relationships between customer incivility (CIVT), emotional exhaustion (EEXT), turnover intentions (TINT) and job satisfaction (JSAT). A total of 328 customer-contact employees in 4 and 5 star hotels in Nigeria participated. Using structural equation modeling, the findings demonstrate that CIVT increases EEXT and TINT, but has no direct influence on JSAT. The findings demonstrate that EEXT partially mediates the effect of CIVT on TINT while it fully mediates the effect of CIVT on JSAT. Implications of the findings for the literature and limitation are discussed.