Effect of Perceived Social Support on Emotional Intelligence of Malaysian Service Sector Employees

Abstract

The goal of this study is to ascertain how emotional intelligence, made up of personal and social competence, is affected by perceived social support. The sources of perceived social support are loved ones, close friends, and significant others. Emotional intelligence enables people to control their emotional energy to support those around them. Service sector employees are targeted as they deal with the effects of the recent pandemic. PLS-SEM was used to analyse 536 responses. Personal and social competencies were impacted by perceived social support. Surprisingly, personal competency was more strongly impacted. For various other economic sectors, similar analyses can be conducted. Keywords: emotional intelligence; perceived social support, personal competence, social competence eISSN 2514-7528 ©2023. The Authors. Published for AMER & cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour StudiesCollege of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/jabs.v8i24.421