Research on How Emotional Expressions of Emotional Labor Workers and Perception of Customer Feedbacks Affect Turnover Intentions: Emphasis on Moderating Effects of Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Previous studies have used various external variables and parameters as well as moderator variables such as emotional intelligence have been to understand emotional labor and its related problems. However, a comprehensive model to study such variables’ correlations with each other and their overall effect on emotional labor has not yet been established. This study used a structural equation model to understand the relationship between employees’ expression of emotional labor and perception of customer feedbacks. The study also looked at how the perception of customer feedback affects emotional exhaustion in order to understand how emotional exhaustion affects job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Further, in order to fully understand the effects of emotion on emotional labor at the service contact points, this study developed and tested a model of emotional labor with four factors of emotional intelligence as moderating factors. Five hundred and seventy nine emotional labor workers in service industries in the United States were collected and 577 valid survey results have been analyzed. The result shows that there exists moderating effects of emotional intelligence on how employees’ Deep Acting and Surface Acting recognize customers’ reactions, both positive and negative, that would affect employees’ Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction, and hence, Turnover Intention. The result suggests that employees with better understanding of their own emotions, although they are more likely to recover from emotional exhaustion, experience a greater negative effect when there is a discrepancy between what they feel and how they should act.

Empathy and Delight in a Personal Service Setting

“…While the role of employee empathy and deep acting has been separately examined in various service industries including call centres, hospitality (tourism/hotels/restaurants), retail, health care, education, and administrative (e.g. Grandey, 2003; Larson and Yao, 2005; Wieseke et al, 2012; Mesmer-Magnus et al, 2012; Hardy, 2017; Lee et al, 2019), no research has been found to empirically investigate how these factors together impact service quality and customer delight. In our study, we chose health care service to examine the proposed theoretical relationships as this context has the depth and variance of service experiences.…”

“…This is a main strategy of regulating emotion that employees use to comply with expectations of emotional display (Kruml and Geddes, 2000; Hochschild, 2003). Prior research shows that employee deep acting enhances customers’ perceptions of the service experience (Grandey, 2003; Groth et al, 2009), customer feedbacks (Lee et al, 2019), and customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions (Hennig-Thurau et al, 2006; Hur et al, 2015).…”

A Qualitative Exploratory Observational Study: An Entrepreneurship Managers’ Emotional Intelligence and Impact on the Financial Organization’s Success in the United States

“…This is known as surface acting. Lee et al (2019) noted that surface acting could have negative effects on employee job satisfaction, the disconnect between their true feelings and the surface acting to lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout. One instance where surface acting is necessary and almost unavoidable is where language and cultural barriers exist.…”

Revisiting the Effect of Emotional Labor: A Multi-Level Investigation in Front-Line Service Teams

“…Emotional labor was originally defined by Arlie Hochschild as the “management of feeling to create a publicly facial and bodily display” ( Hochschild, 1983 : 7). For example, service employees’ effective emotional display, contributes significantly to effective customer services ( Lee et al, 2019 ; Soderlund and Berg, 2019 ). Emotional labor is usually performed via two strategies, i.e., surface acting and deep acting ( Grandey, 2003 ).…”