旅游业顾客不当对待与一线服务员工工作退缩行为——基于基本心理需要满足视角

Customer Mistreatment and Frontline Service Employees’Withdrawal Behavior in Toursim:Based on Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction Perspective

服务业中“顾客永远是对的”的理念往往令一线员工成为顾客不当对待的对象,致使一线员工表现出不良的心理和行为反应。文章基于自我决定理论,从基本心理需要满足视角探讨旅游业顾客不当对待对一线服务员工工作退缩行为的影响机制,并引入感知主管支持探寻顾客不当对待对一线服务员工基本心理需要满足的作用边界。研究采用3阶段问卷调查方式,得到316份来自旅游业一线服务员工的有效问卷,进一步使用阶层回归分析进行假设检验,结果表明:(1)顾客不当对待显著地正向影响一线服务员工工作退缩行为;(2)基本心理需要满足显著地负向影响一线服务员工工作退缩行为,在顾客不当对待与一线服务员工工作退缩行为之间起到部分中介作用;(3)感知主管支持可以减弱顾客不当对待对一线服务员工基本心理需要满足的负向影响,并调节了基本心理需要满足在顾客不当对待与一线服务员工工作退缩行为之间的中介作用。文章丰富了工作退缩行为领域的理论研究,为旅游企业规避和减少顾客不当对待引起的消极影响提供了一定的实践启示。

The popular view,“the customer is always right”,suggests that some customers may feel entitled to vent their negative moods to frontline service employees or to make excessive demands that may be impossible for frontline service employees to meet.A common challenge that frontline service employees often face is mistreatment by customers in the tourism industry.Customer mistreatment refers to low-quality interpersonal treatment employees receive from their customers and harms frontline employees by increasing strain,burnout,and exhaustion.Even evidence indicates that customer mistreatment can cause frontline employees’work withdrawal behavior,which is any purposeful behavior by which an employee endeavors to avoid working or a reduction in an employee’s sociopsychological attraction to or interest in the work or the organization.However,the existing studies of the link between customer mistreatment and employee work withdrawal behavior are based solely on the perspective of emotion,ignoring that employees’basic psychological need satisfaction may be another important mediating variable.Besides,whether perceived supervisor support can alleviate the impact of customer mistreatment on employees’basic psychological need satisfaction has yet to be thoroughly studied.To fill these research gaps,our present research drawing on self-determination theory examines the mediating role that basic psychological need satisfaction played in the relationship between customer mistreatment and employees’work withdrawal behavior and the moderating role that perceived supervisor support played in the link between customer mistreatment and basic psychological need satisfaction.We conducted a multi-wave longitudinal tracking study and a total of 316 valid questionnaires were collected from frontline employees of the tourism industry.Then hierarchical regression method was used for testing hypotheses and the results indicated that:(1)Customer mistreatment had a positive impact on employees’work withdrawal behavior;(2)Basic psychological need satisfaction had a negative effect on employees’work withdrawal behavior and played a partial mediating role in the relationship between customer mistreatment and employees’work withdrawal behavior;(3)Perceived supervisor support significantly played a moderating role in the relationship between customer mistreatment and basic psychological need satisfaction and moderated the effect of mediation of basic psychological need satisfaction between customer mistreatment and employees’work withdrawal behavior.The findings provide both theoretical implications and practical guidance.First,our research extends the literature of customer mistreatment and employees’work withdrawal behavior by introducing the mediating role of the basic psychological need satisfaction,and the moderating role of perceived supervisor support.Second,the current findings can bring some practical guidance for managers of tourism enterprises to reduce the effect that customer mistreatment had negatively impacted on employees’basic psychological need satisfaction and avoid employees’work withdrawal behavior to some extent.Managers,for instance,should regularly analyze typical cases of service and provide service skills training for frontline employees.Last,limitations and opportunities for future investigation are discussed.