Ticket inspectors in action: Body-worn camera analysis of aggressive and nonaggressive passenger encounters.

Abstract

Objective: Workplace aggression is a harmful occupational hazard, which has been associated with individual and organizational level risk factors. By comparison, little is known about the face-to-face interactional dynamics that shape employee victimizations. To address this gap, we provide an interactional analysis of how ticket inspector actions are associated with the risk of passenger aggression. Method: Data was a video sample of 123 ticket fining events from public buses recorded by occupational body-worn cameras. We systematically coded the inspector and passenger actions in each fining event. The individual and interactional risk factors associated with passenger aggression were estimated with a logistic regression model. Results: Our empirical analysis suggests that aggressive fining events unfold as "character contests," in which the actions of the inspectors are associated with the aggressive outcome. Conclusions: These findings are in line with situational approaches to violence highlighting that aggressive incidents often develop as an interplay between victim and offender actions. We propose focusing on the behavioral actions of employees for prevention measures of workplace aggression.

Citizen Self-Presentation and Aggression in Ticket Fining Events: A Video Observational Study

“…In the current study, we have directed our analytical focus on passengers' self-presentational acts in order to characterize and analyze how citizens behave in a type of contested frontline encounter. As such, we recognize the limited attention on ticket inspectors' behavior during these events, which have been found to be associated with passenger deviancy (Suquet 2019) and aggression (Friis et al 2020). Our contribution to the frontline work literature is a categorization of uncooperative and defensive citizen behavior to use as perceivable risk factors of aggression in situ for frontline staff.…”

“…For the purpose of our study, we selected 40 ticket fining events for in-depth analysis. Seven of these events are also included in a statistical analysis of the association between inspector actions and risk of passenger aggression (see Friis et al 2020). To analyze differences in selfpresentations, the sample comprised both aggressive and nonaggressive contested events.…”

“…As such, we follow the growing literature emphasizing the necessity to pay attention to the actual conflict encounters in order to explain why some situations escalate when others do not (Bowman, Whitehead, and Raymond 2018;Collins 2008;Felson and Steadman 1983). Recent research has shown the importance of studying situational factors when examining workplace violence during nighttime economy (Graham et al 2005;Liebst et al 2019), public transport (Friis et al 2020), and store robberies (Lindegaard, Bernasco, and Jacques 2015;Lindegaard, De Vries, and Bernasco 2018;Nassauer 2018). In a study on robbery rituals, Nassauer (2018) showed how perpetrator and victim both have parts to play in a robbery to proceed successfully, according to the expected robbery routine.…”

Conducting a Systematic Social Observation of Body-Camera Footage: Methodological and Practical Insights

“…While a tool of law enforcement, the benefits of BWC footage as a data source are beginning to diffuse across various disciplines. Recent research has expanded the SSO of video footage captured by BWCs to analyze how interpersonal encounters unfold (see Dewar et al, Friis et al, 2020;Pollock et al, 2020;Hardy et al, 2017;Ho et al, 2017;Voigt et al, 2017;Willits & Makin, 2018).…”

Demanding proper payment in extremely vulnerable labor markets:gender differences in the prevalence of violence

“…There has been a proliferating research on aggression within the relationship between employees and citizens (e.g., Friis et al (2020) about ticket inspectors; Geoffrion et al (2017) about the health care, law enforcement and public transportations sectors). However, literature that specifically compares aggression that men and women workers exert on citizens is scarce.…”