Hotel service providers’ emotional labor: The antecedents and effects on burnout

The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents and consequences of two emotional labor strategies (surface and deep acting) in the lodging industry. Variety, duration, and positive display rules are significant predictors of hotel service providers’ deep acting and negative display rules are related to service providers’ surface acting. Employees ohigh in neuroticism are more likely to fake their emotional expressions (surface acting) when dealing with guests and those high in extraversion are more likely to try hard to invoke the appropriate emotions (deep acting). Results further indicate that surface actors are more exhausted and cynical than deep actors and the mediating role of emotional labor between burnout and job and personality characteristics is found to be rather weak. Managerial implications for hotel operators are discussed.     

When we are onstage,we smile: The effects of emotional labor on employee work outcomes

A growing body of literature has confirmed the deleterious effects of emotional labor on service employees. The study adds to it by investigating two hypothesized antecedents to emotional labor; affectivity and empathy which is conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct composed of emotional contagion and empathic concern. It also examines the impact of emotional labor on job satisfaction and exhaustion. The results confirmed a two-dimensional structure of emotional labor, emotive dissonance, and emotive effort. Hospitality employees with higher positive affect tend to experience less emotive dissonance while individuals with higher negative affect exert more effort to enact emotional labor. A positive relationship was found between emotional contagion and emotive dissonance, and emotive effort and job satisfaction. The results also suggested a negative relationship between emotive effort and emotional exhaustion. An unexpected negative relationship was found between emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion. Managerial implications discuss training and acting techniques to more effectively manage employee emotional labor.     

Development and validation of the hospitality emotional labor scale

This paper describes the development and validation of a 19-item instrument (hospitality emotional labor scale, HELS) for assessing employees’ perception of emotional labor in hospitality organizations. Three studies were conducted to purify the scale items, examine the scale's dimensionality, and to evaluate the scale's reliability, factor structure, and validity. The internal consistency coefficients from the three studies, ranging from .69 to .88, evidence the reliability of the HELS. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential applications of the scale.     

The relationships among professional competence,job satisfaction and career development confidence for chefs in Taiwan

This study explores the relationship among professional competence, job satisfaction and the career development confidence for chefs, and examines the mediators of job satisfaction for professional competence and career development confidence in Taiwan. The analytical results demonstrate that work attitude was the most influential construct for professional competence, and culinary creativity had the lowest reported ratings. Job selection satisfaction showed higher ranking than current job satisfaction. The structural equation modeling results showed that professional competence significantly affects job satisfaction, and that job satisfaction predicts actual career development confidence. Additionally, job satisfaction mediated the influences of professional competence and career development confidence. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Effects of organizational/occupational characteristics and personality traits on hotel manager emotional exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion is a type of burnout and a state of mental weariness. It is an important issue for hospitality organizations because customer contact employees and hospitality managers function in an environment that is particularly susceptible to the creation of the antecedents of burnout. Further, emotional exhaustion itself is costly to hospitality organizations and individuals because it has been shown to result in depersonalization, detachment, decreased service quality and job performance, and increased turnover. Using a sample of 544 hotel managers from 36 hotels located throughout the United States, this study examines whether emotional exhaustion is a function of organizational and occupational characteristics, including job demands, quality orientation, pressure to produce, and need for “face time.” In addition, this study analyzes whether personality traits of the managers themselves, including extroversion and neuroticism, are predictors of emotional exhaustion. This study found emotional exhaustion of hotel managers to be a function of not only job and organizational characteristics, but also personality characteristics.     

Individual and group level antecedents and consequence of emotional labor of restaurant employees

The purposes of this study is two-fold: it examines antecedents and consequence of choosing an emotional labor strategy from the basis of the conservation of resource theory and it sub-divides preceding factors of emotional labor into an individual level (emotional intelligence [EI] and psychological contract) and a restaurant level (service under pressure). The research supported all the hypotheses proposed. Employees with high EI tend to select deep acting (DA), which is a driver of higher service performance. Service under pressure is a significant driver of employee surface acting (SA), which leads to poor service performance. In addition, DA enhances service performance, while SA impedes the effective delivery of services.     

Understanding the influence of polychronicity on job satisfaction and turnover intention: A study of non-supervisory hotel employees

The hospitality industry is characterized as a work environment where time use is important and where switching behavior among multiple tasks is frequently required within a given time period. These work environments promote polychronic behavior, which requires employees to deal with two or more activities in the same time block (Bluedorn et al., 1999). The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study examining the interrelationship among polychronicity, job satisfaction, and turnover intention within a hotel context. The sample (n = 609) was collected from non-supervisory employees of two hotels located in the southwestern United States. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to empirically test the proposed hypotheses. Our results provided evidence that polychronicity significantly contributed to job satisfaction and turnover intention. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.     

Reward climate and its impact on service quality orientation and employee attitudes

This study examined the mediating role of service quality orientation (SQO) on reward climate and employee attitudes. Using a sample drawn from the hotel industry in Hong Kong, we found that reward climate was significantly associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Employees that perceived a strong service reward climate tended to exhibit a more pronounced SQO and in turn higher levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These findings underscore the importance of reward climate to the process of service provision. Implications for the establishment of a service reward climate are discussed as are suggestions for future research in this promising new area.     

Working onboard - Job perception, organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sector

This paper focuses on the perceived work environment and its influence on organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sector. Two focus group interviews were conducted in addition to one survey among the crew in an upmarket cruise line. The focus groups elicited responses concerning crew experiences of working onboard. Based on this information, a questionnaire was constructed to measure job perceptions among crew members. The results indicate that all of the experience domains were related to job commitment and job satisfaction, but that the strongest effects were found to be perceived “Respect”, the “Social atmosphere”, and “Food and living quarters”.     

Investigating the antecedents and consequences of burnout and isolation among flight attendants

Flight attendants, typically characterized as being engaged in ‘emotional labour’, often experience stress when performing their work, and this may result in negative job outcomes and health problems. Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study empirically investigates the relationships among job demands, job resources, burnout, colleague isolation, health problems and job performance for flight attendants. A self-administered questionnaire is designed to collect empirical data from flight attendants working at Taiwanese airlines. Using structural equation modelling approach, the results show that burnout mediates the relationship between job demands and health problems, and that colleague isolation mediates the relationship between job resources and job performance. Empirical implications are provided and discussed.     

The effects of emotional intelligence on counterproductive work behaviors and organizational citizen behaviors among food and beverage employees in a deluxe hotel

The purpose of this study is to understand the interrelationships among the emotional intelligence of employees in a deluxe hotel, their counterproductive work behaviors, and organizational citizen behaviors. The sample of this study consists of 319 food and beverage (F&B) employees of a five-star hotel in Korea. The results showed that as elements of emotional intelligence, others’ emotion appraisal, use of emotion, and self-emotion appraisal significantly affected counterproductive work behaviors, whereas self-emotion appraisal and use of emotion affected organizational citizen behaviors. In addition, moderating effects were evident related to job positions in the causal relationships among emotional intelligence, counterproductive work behaviors, and organizational citizen behaviors. Limitations of this study and future research directions are also discussed.     

An investigation of the role of justice in turnover intentions,job satisfaction,and organizational citizenship behavior in hospitality industry

The relationship of organizational justice perceptions of hotel employees in North Cyprus with various work-related variables was investigated. A total of 208 employees and their managers filled out questionnaires. It was found that distributive justice tended to be a stronger predictor of all of the study variables compared to procedural justice. Findings suggest that the fairness of personal outcomes that employees receive may have more impact on turnover intentions, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) than the perceived fairness of a firm's procedures. It was also found that even though improved job satisfaction seems to be related to OCB, organizational justice seems to be the key factor that has a strong effect on both OCB and job satisfaction.     

The relationships among overall quick-casual restaurant image,perceived value,customer satisfaction,and behavioral intentions

The purpose of this research is to explain the relationships among overall quick-casual restaurant image, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in the quick-casual restaurant industry. The findings indicate that overall quick-casual restaurant image significantly influences perceived value, and overall quick-casual restaurant image and perceived value had a significant role in influencing customer satisfaction. Additionally, overall quick-casual restaurant image, perceived value, and customer satisfaction are significant predictors of customers’ behavioral intentions. Finally, customer satisfaction can act as a partial mediator in the relationship between overall quick-casual restaurant image/perceived value and behavioral intentions. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and future research ideas.     

Personality,basic emotions,and satisfaction: Primary emotions in the mountaineering experience

Consumption-related emotions – usually operationalized as broad, summary dimensions such as positive and negative emotions or, alternatively, pleasure and arousal – have been shown to be influenced by enduring personality traits and, in turn, to influence customer satisfaction. Experiential tourism activities such as mountaineering evoke powerful emotions that strongly influence tourist satisfaction. Although Zajonc (1980) proposed and more recent neurophysiological evidence confirms that emotions, especially fear, can be primary (can precede cognitions), consumption-related emotions have heretofore been modeled as occurring concurrently with or consequent to cognitive appraisals. Our results show that two basic consumption-related emotions, fear and joy, are influenced by neuroticism and extraversion, respectively, and in turn and in conjunction with cognitive appraisals influence tourist satisfaction. Joy has direct effects on satisfaction that are not mediated by cognitions; fear’s inverse effects on satisfaction are fully mediated by cognitions. These findings extend understandings of trait/basic-emotion relationships and of basic emotions’ roles in satisfaction formation and also, importantly, demonstrate an instance of primary consumer emotions.     

Facets of Type A personality and pay increase among the employees of fast food restaurants

Employee satisfaction continues to be a key to an understanding of relatively high turnover rates within the hospitality industry. The present study explores the personality characteristics of employees who receive pay increases in the restaurant industry. One of the two facets of Type A personality ‘achievement striving’ was found to be positively related to all three measures of pay increases but the other facet ‘impatience and irritability’ was not related. The implications of the findings for selection, retention and motivation of restaurant employees are discussed.     

Investigating the role of festivalscape in culinary tourism: The case of food and wine events

This paper analyses the importance of festivalscapes in determining emotions, satisfaction and future behavior of participants at food and wine events. The study applies a structural equation model (SEM) with latent variables to survey responses of visitors to the “Friuli DOC” Italian festival. The main results are that festivalscape and emotions have significant direct effects on satisfaction, which in turn has a significant effect on behavioral intention. The effects of the festivalscape on visitors' future behavior are only indirect and mediated by satisfaction. Thus, in order to enhance their visitors' behavioral intentions, festival organizers should monitor emotions and satisfaction deriving from the subjective perception of exogenous characteristics as food and wine quality, comfort and entertainment.     

Carrying capacity and its implications in a Chinese ancient village: the case of Hongcun.

Hongcun, an ancient village in Anhui in China, is an UNESCO-gazetted village because of its Huizhou architecture. It attracts over 1.6 million visitors per annum. Based upon a simple spatial model, the results of this study indicate that its social carrying capacity is being vastly exceeded, and the consequences are discussed in terms of the impacts on village life using data derived from a survey of residents. In terms of addressing the issues of crowding, it is suggested that a number of future choices face the village, ranging from the imposition of quotas on visitation to sustain and protect its UNESCO status by significantly reducing overcrowding, or alternatively, to embrace mass tourism to become akin to a theme park that is based on Huizhou culture.