The Impact of Perceived Customer Participation on Employees' Emotional Labor: The Cross-Level Moderating Effect of Customer Orientation

Abstract

Based on the job demand-resource theory, it is proposed that employees perceived customer participation as a job demand increases employees' emotional labor, which in turn affects the service output - customer satisfaction. The moderating role of employees' customer orientation as a job resource between perceived customer participation and employees' emotional labor is also considered. A quantitative study of 354 data was conducted to reveal the relationship between them. The results show that perceived customer participation positively affects both deep acting and surface acting. Perceived customer participation positively affects customer satisfaction through the mediation of deep acting and negatively affects customer satisfaction through the mediation of surface acting. Customer orientation has a positive relationship with deep acting and a negative relationship with surface acting, and negatively moderates the positive relationship of perceived customer participation with surface acting.