I Remember It All Too Well: Gig Workers' Psychological Detachment After Receiving Negative Customer Feedback and the Roles of Job Security and Handling Time

The recently booming gig economy, in which gig workers provide on-demand and short-term services to customers in exchange for monetary rewards via online gig platforms, creates opportunities for workers to receive instantaneous customer feedback, particularly negative feedback. Considering the emerging controversy concerning gig workers' well-being, the present research strives to understand how and when negative customer feedback influences gig workers' subsequent work and well-being outcomes. Grounded in conservation of resources (COR) theory, this research hypothesizes that negative customer feedback hinders psychological detachment, contingent on gig workers' perception of their job security and their customer feedback handling time. In turn, impaired psychological detachment is related to lower job performance and job-related well-being for gig workers on the following day. Findings from a study using an experience sampling method (ESM) that included 147 gig workers across five consecutive workdays (Study 1) and a recall study that included 273 gig workers (Study 2) provide general support for the hypothesized model. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are also discussed.