Customer incivil behavior and employee retaliation

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine a moderated mediation relationship between customer incivility and employee retaliation. Design/methodology/approach This study tested the hypotheses using data from 459 hospitality industry employee responses. Data was collected by using Amazon’s MTurk. Findings The study results suggest that employee anger mediates the customer incivility and employee retaliation relationship. Further, the employee’s regulatory focus (namely, promotion and preventive regulatory focus) moderates this mediated relationship. Specifically, employee promotion regulatory focus positively moderates the relationship between customer incivility and employee anger, whereas prevention regulatory focus negatively moderates the relationship. Originality/value Extant study has not explored customer incivility and employee retaliation relationship under moderated mediation influence of regulatory focus and employee anger, respectively.