Customer incivility and service sabotage in the hotel industry

Purpose: Using equity theory, this study examined the relationship between customer incivility and service sabotage among hotel employees. Specifically, we examined the mediating role of revenge motivation between customer incivility and service sabotage and investigated the moderating role of emotion regulation in this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach: A multiwave, multisource questionnaire survey was conducted with 291 employee-supervisor dyads at chain hotels in Shenzhen, China. Previously developed and validated measures of customer incivility, revenge motivation, emotion regulation, and service sabotage were adapted.

Findings: Customer incivility increased employees’ revenge motivation and service sabotage. Emotion regulation acted as a boundary condition in customer incivility’s direct effect on revenge motivation and in its indirect effect on service sabotage through revenge motivation. Cognitive reappraisal can ameliorate the detrimental influence of customer incivility while expressive suppression can exacerbate its adverse effects.

Practical implications: Managers should monitor and deter the emergence of uncivil behavior, provide psychological support for employees experiencing customer incivility, and encourage such employees to use emotion regulation with cognitive reappraisal rather than expressive suppression.

Originality/value: To our knowledge, no prior research has investigated the customer incivility–service sabotage relationship in the hotel industry. This study addresses this gap by shedding light on how customer incivility can motivate service sabotage among hotel employees. Furthermore, we used equity theory rather than the commonly used resources perspective to offer new insight into the customer incivility–service sabotage relationship