Customers’ perceived justice, emotions, direct and indirect reactions to service recovery: Moderating effects of recovery efforts

Abstract

This study investigates customers’ direct and indirect reactions to different levels of service recovery efforts using a proposed model incorporating perceived justice and emotions. This research proposes two forms of customers’ direct reactions after a service recovery: condemnation and praise. Based on a scenario-based online experiment with 395 casual dining customers in the United States, this research finds that distributive justice and procedural justice influence customers’ indirect reactions (e.g., revisit intention, word-of-mouth) both directly and indirectly via emotions. Interactional justice influences customers’ direct reactions both directly and indirectly through its prior effects on emotions. The moderating test on levels of service recovery efforts reveals that a high level of service recovery efforts significantly reduces the negative effects of emotions on customers’ intention to condemn and increases their intention to praise compared with a low level of service recovery efforts.