The Effects of Experienced Customer Incivility on Employees’ Behavior Toward Customers and Coworkers

Abstract

This study investigates how customer incivility is related to employee incivility toward both customers and coworkers by assessing the effects of emotional job demands and burnout. The target population of this research is frontline employees working in the full-service restaurant segment in the United States. Convenience sampling was used to select participants for an online survey. The results show that employees’ experienced customer incivility is positively associated with both emotional job demands and burnout. In addition, emotional job demands mediate the association between experienced customer incivility and burnout. Moreover, it presents the positive relationships not only between burnout and employee incivility toward customers but also between burnout and employee incivility toward coworkers. This study provides theoretical and practical implications by investigating the detrimental influence of customer incivility as a stressor to trigger emotional job demands and burnout, which can lead to deviant behaviors toward both customers and coworkers.