The Effect of Customer Incivility on Frontline Employee Using EVLN Model: Mediated by Negative Emotion and Moderated by Job Meaningfulness

Abstract

The service industry is a unique sector of frequent interactions between customers and employees, particularly with frontline employees play a crucial role in determining service quality and customers' satisfaction. However, experiencing customer incivility is a reality for many frontline employees. Past research has established that dealing with customer incivility is extremely stressful and can lead them to engage in destructive behavior. Those behavior is likely to cause various forms of negative employee well-being and decreased organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to delve deeper into the experience of customer incivility from the perspective of frontline employees and their respond to destructive behavior using the EVLN (exit, voice, loyalty and neglect) model. Furthermore, this study also examines what mitigates and exacerbates the negative influence of customer incivility by measuring the mediating effect of negative emotion and moderating effects of job meaningfulness. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between customer incivility and destructive behavior, and to examine the role of job meaningfulness as a moderator and negative emotion as a mediator. Data was analyzed using the PLS-SEM. The results showed that customer incivility influenced employee's destructive behavior through their negative emotion. On the other hand, job meaningfulness mitigates the employee's destructive behavior. The findings from this study can drive organizations to motivate their employees and provide a flexible job structure to encourage the employees to have a feeling of meaningfulness towards their job.