Customer incivility and frontline employee job performance: a moderated mediation analysis of PsyCap and emotional exhaustion

Abstract

Purpose

Premised on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, our study attempts to investigate if emotional exhaustion (EE) is a mediator in linking customer incivility (CI) and employee job performance (JP). Additionally, it examines the moderating role of PsyCap in customer incivility and job performance relationships. Furthermore, we explore whether PsyCap moderates the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion in customer incivility and job performance relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a multi-phase survey, data was gathered from 469 frontline employees working in diverse service sectors in India. All analyses were done with SPSS 25 and AMOS 23 to determine the study's findings.

Findings

The study substantiates a partial mediation effect, revealing that customer incivility intensifies emotional exhaustion among FLEs, resulting in decreased job performance. In addition, the interaction of PsyCap seemed to weaken the relationship between CI and employee JP. However, PsyCap does not mitigate the indirect association of CI and employee JP via emotional exhaustion. To our surprise, we observed a slight amplification in the mediating impact of emotional EE at elevated levels of PsyCap.

Practical implications

The study findings suggest that training employees and cultivating their PsyCap could be a strategic solution for effectively managing and mitigating the adverse effects of customer incivility in the workplace.

Originality/value

Our study marks the first empirical exploration of PsyCap's moderating role between customer incivility and both job performance and emotional exhaustion linkage.

Citation

Khanam, A. and Tarab, S. (2024), "Customer incivility and frontline employee job performance: a moderated mediation analysis of PsyCap and emotional exhaustion", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTI-08-2023-0569