International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106

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International Journal of Hospitality Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman

The relationship between customer incivility, restaurant frontline

service employee burnout and turnover intention
Su Jin Han a , Mark A. Bonn b , Meehee Cho c,∗
a
Division of Business Administration, Hoseo University, 78 Gackwonsa Way, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan-si, Chungnam 330-713, South Korea
b
Dedman School of Hospitality, Florida State University, 288 Champions Way, UCB 4100, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2541, United States
c
Dedman School of Hospitality, Florida State University, 288 Champions Way, UCB 4110, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2541, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Employee turnover continues to represent one of the most significant challenges faced by the U.S. restau-
Received 15 April 2015 rant industry, and customer incivility is regarded as being related to this phenomenon. In order to obtain
Received in revised form 1 October 2015 a better understanding about the relationships between customer incivility, restaurant frontline service
Accepted 3 October 2015
employee burnout and their turnover, information was obtained from 228 frontline service employees
working in 28 independent Florida-based restaurants. Employees provided details of their experiences
Keywords:
and attitudes regarding customer incivility as well as information on their job burnout and turnover inten-
Customer incivility
tion. Hierarchical linear modeling was used for data analysis. Results confirmed that customer incivility
Burnout
Turnover intention
has a positive relationship with restaurant frontline service employee job burnout. Further, this study
Organizational support found that the relationship between customer incivility and turnover intention through job burnout was
Supervisory support fully mediated. The moderating roles that organizational support and supervisory support play upon
Restaurant frontline service employees the relationships between customer incivility and burnout were also investigated. Results confirmed
that organizational and supervisory support moderates the relationship between customer incivility and
burnout. Managerial implications for developing effective employee management strategies are provided
for restaurant managers.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction A recent research study (Human Performance, 2014) conducted

a survey of 438 restaurant employees (servers, hosts, bartenders,
Service-oriented businesses, including restaurants, frequently cashiers, and managers) to examine their experience involving cus-
train their frontline service providers under the overemphasized tomer uncivil behavior. This study reports that most respondents
philosophical position that “the customer is always right”, or “the disproportionately relate their high levels of stress to customers
customer is King” and that employees should “always provide exhibiting rude or unpleasant behavior, often about situations
service with a smile” (Rafaeli et al., 2012). Although uncivil in which the restaurant service provider has no control. This
customer behavior is endemically reported in various hospital- stressful workplace environment would be related to high levels
ity business situations (Aslan and Kozak, 2012), most existing of employee distress (Adams and Webster, 2013), psychological
academic literature has focused on how to increase customer sat- and job-specific strain (Wilson and Holmvall, 2013), emotional
isfaction operating under the assumption that customers behave exhaustion (Kern and Grandey, 2009; van Jaarsveld et al., 2010)
rationally. Therefore, frontline service industry employees are and further associated with high employee turnover rates. As
required to follow very strict organizational policies and reg- evidence, employee turnover rates specific to the U.S. restau-
ulations regarding how their emotions are expressed, even in rant industry continue to remain much higher (62.6%) annually,
situations involving customers whom are perceived to be acting compared with the overall private sector turnover rate of 42.2%
in an uncivil manner (Sliter et al., 2010). (Restaurantengine.com, 2014). This is an extremely critical issue
for the U.S. restaurant industry, which must continuously invest
revenue to recruit, select and train new employees that are replac-
ing those former employees having terminated their restaurant
∗ Corresponding author.
frontline service positions (Mueller, 2011).
E-mail addresses: humanhan06@gmail.com (S.J. Han), mbonn@fsu.edu
In consideration of this situation, recent academic literature has
(M.A. Bonn), mcho3@fsu.edu, chom2h2@hotmail.com (M. Cho). begun to pay attention to incivility that occurs when customers

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.10.002
0278-4319/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
98 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106

mistreat employees. While negative workplace behavior has been 2. Literature review and hypothesis development
addressed in the existing organizational behavior literature, Kern
and Grandy’s (2009) study was the first attempt to encompass inci- 2.1. Customer incivility
vility by customers and focused on the negative impact of customer
incivility upon employees. Incivility is defined as “low intensity Early incivility studies focused upon incivility from the stand-
deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in point of employee-to-employee interactions within the workplace
violation of workplace norms for mutual respect” (Andersson and (e.g., Cortina et al., 2001; Ben-Zur and Yagil, 2005), while more
Pearson, 1999, p. 447). Research documents acts of customer inci- recent attention has been devoted to customer incivility (Bunk and
vility that includes situations where employees perceive customer Magley, 2013). Although customer behavior related to incivility can
rudeness such as when customers ignore employees and/or speak be seemingly innocuous, such uncivil behavior may represent an
to employees in a disrespectful and/or insulting manner (Sliter overwhelming situation to an employee involved with experienc-
et al., 2010; van Jaarsveld et al., 2010). Additional research sug- ing perceived customer incivility (Cortina et al., 2001; Bunk and
gests that uncivil customer behavior directed to employees may Magley, 2013). Additionally, customer incivility could be looked
represent the most frequently experienced form of workplace mis- upon by employees as being a daily hassle, or as part of the job
treatment (Sliter et al., 2012). expectations. In reality, a single incident of incivility might not be
Although less than ten years of scholarly attention has focused perceived as stressful, but an accumulation of perceived incivility
upon customer incivility, it has received growing interest as a incidents may lead to negative outcomes (Kern and Grandey, 2009;
research topic in a variety of industries including educational Sliter et al., 2012)
service and engineering firms (Adams and Webster, 2013), retail Existing research regarding customer incivility has been almost
sales service (Hur et al., 2015; Wilson and Holmvall, 2013), bank- exclusively limited to the organizational behavior area. These
ing (Sliter et al., 2010, 2012) and insurance (Walker et al., 2014). studies provide evidence that customer incivility increases the
However, despite insights from previous organization behavior emotional exhaustion of retail employees (Kern and Grandey, 2009)
research, past and current research appearing in the hospitality and the stress levels of bank tellers (Sliter et al., 2010). Signif-
literature has neglected to investigate issues related to customer icant effects of customer incivility were also found to increase
incivility when specifically applied within the context of restau- stress levels of engineering firm employees (Adams and Webster,
rants and how these issues regarding customer incivility may be 2013) and department store sales employees (Hur et al., 2015), and
overcome. was also responsible for contributing to bank teller absenteeism
To obtain a better understanding of customer incivility in the (Sliter et al., 2012). Other research studies found that employees
restaurant business setting, this study adopts the Conservation of who experience customer incivility may feel exhausted, and con-
Resource (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989). COR theory suggests that sequently misbehave toward their coworkers (van Jaarsveld et al.,
individuals attempt to acquire, maintain and protect their physi- 2010; Walker et al., 2014).
cal, emotional, social and psychological resources. Individuals being As seen in Table 1, existing customer incivility literature focuses
placed in situations where customer incivility occurs, at a min- upon the identification of customer incivility and factors that neg-
imum, feel distress, sadness, rejection, irrationality and hostility atively impact employee emotions and behavior. In particular,
(Liu et al., 2008). In particular, frontline service employees are three studies found that racial identity among minorities (Kern
frequently exposed to situations involving customer incivility. Con- and Grandey, 2009), coworker incivility (Sliter et al., 2012), entity
sequently, employee defense mechanisms must become enacted incivility and negative affectivity (Walker et al., 2014) significantly
to guard and protect their personal resources as a direct result increase the negative effect customer incivility has upon employ-
of customer incivility, often leaving them emotionally strained. ees. However, no research study has yet to explore factors that may
Supporting this theory, this current study suggests that customer reduce the negative impact customer incivility has upon employ-
incivility may make restaurant employees consume their emo- ees. Therefore, it is necessary to explore this research void with
tional and psychological resources, which represents job burnout respect to restaurant frontline service employees.
and further results in employees leaving jobs.
Early research studies regarding job stress focused on a vari- 2.2. The relationship between customer incivility and burnout
ety of factors including emotional support, organizational rewards
and job conditions in order to examine how to alleviate employee Adopting the Conservation of Resource (COR) theory, Kern
stress levels (Kottke and Sharafinski, 1988; Shore and Shore, 1995). and Grandey (2009), suggested that customer incivility can be
Subsequent studies have demonstrated that support from other regarded as a social stressor that can drain emotional and cog-
individuals and/or organizations can buffer consequences related nitive employee resources. Another incivility study found that it
to employee stress (Andrews and Kacmar, 2001; Demerouti et al., can increase employee job demands, requiring efforts to correct
2014; Miner et al., 2012; Sakurai and Jex, 2012; Randall et al., 1999). psychological resource depletion (van Jaarsveld et al., 2010). Gen-
Based upon this body of knowledge, our study expects to find that erally, employee experiences involving the depletion of emotional
support from restaurant organizations and supervisors can play an and physical resources, represents job ‘burnout’ (Karatepe and
important role to moderate workplace stress caused specifically by Aleshinloye, 2009; Lee et al., 2012). Supporting this logic, it could be
customer incivility. possible that customer incivility applied to the hospitality industry
With this in mind, the main study objectives are to investigate may also result in psychological resource depletion which could be
(a) the relationship between customer incivility and restaurant considered a leading factor including employee burnout. Because
frontline service employee burnout and also, the mediating role restaurant frontline employees have frequent contact with cus-
burnout plays upon the relationship between customer incivil- tomers compared with other industries, it makes them more prone
ity and employee turnover intention, and (b) the moderating role to emotional burnout (Karatepe, 2015).
support by restaurant organizations and supervisors has upon Originally, Maslach and Jackson (1981) suggested that burnout
the relationship between customer incivility and frontline service is a multidimensional concept comprised of three components:
employee burnout. This study expects to discover that restaurants emotional exhaustion (feeling tired and fatigued), depersonaliza-
can develop and implement effective strategies to assist employees tion (feeling callous and/or uncaring) and reduced accomplishment
with burnout by controlling and managing their job stress related (a feeling of not accomplishing anything). Existing literature (van
specifically to customer incivility. Jaarsveld et al., 2010; Sliter et al., 2012) focusing on the negative
 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106 99

Table 1
Summary of customer incivility literature.

Study Sample Outcome Mediator Moderator Key findings

Kern and Grandey Retail employees Emotional exhaustion Stress Racial identity Stress mediates the relationship
(2009) among minorities between customer incivility and
emotional exhaustion

The centrality of minority employees’

racial identity positively moderates the
relationship between customer
incivility and emotional exhaustion

Sliter et al. (2010) Bank tellers Emotional exhaustion, Emotional Customer incivility has a positive
Customer service labor relationship with emotional
quality exhaustion and a negative relationship
with customer service quality.
Emotional labor mediates the
relationship between customer
incivility and emotional
exhaustion/customer service quality

van Jaarsveld et al. Call center Employee incivility Job demands, Customer incivility is positively related
(2010) employees Emotional to employee incivility toward
exhaustion customers through higher job demands
which leads to emotional exhaustion

Sliter et al. (2012) Bank tellers Sales performance, Coworker incivility Customer incivility has a negative
Absenteeism, Tardiness effect on sales performance and has a
positive effect on absenteeism and
tardiness. Coworker incivility enhances
the relationship between customer
incivility and sales performance and
absenteeism

Adams and University alumni, Coworker incivility, Surface acting Customer incivility is positively related
Webster (2013) engineering firm Distress with surface acting and distress.
employees Surface acting partially mediates the
relationships between customers and
coworker incivility and distress

Wilson and Retail sales Job satisfaction, Customer incivility is negatively linked
Holmvall (2013) employees Turnover intention, with job satisfaction and positively
Psychological and job linked with turnover intentions and
specific strain psychological and job-specific strain

Walker et al. (2014) Insurance Employee incivility Entity incivility, Customer incivility generates
customer service Negative affectivity employee incivility
employees Entity incivility and negative affectivity
enhance the relationship between
customer incivility and employee
incivility

Hur et al. (2015) Department store Surface acting, Emotional Customer incivility is positively related
sales employees Customer orientation exhaustion, to service employee’s use of surface
Surface acting acting and further leads to emotional
exhaustion and customer orientation

effect of customer incivility is limited to examining employee Leiter et al., 2009). The position suggesting the positive rela-
emotional exhaustion, which represents just one of the three tionship between employee burnout and turnover intention has
dimensions associated with burnout. Emotional exhaustion may been empirically supported in various business contexts (Kim and
not be sufficient enough to capture all aspects related to burnout Stoner, 2008; Lu and Gursoy, 2013; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004).
involving relationships between people and human services as in Several research studies have provided evidence that the work-
the context specific to incivility by customers directed at frontline place environment involving job stressors causes high levels of
restaurant employees (Maslach et al., 2001). Therefore, our study employee burnout, which in turn, increases employee turnover
uses a comprehensive approach to more clearly understand the (Cherniss, 1980; Chiang and Jang, 2008; Hinkin and Tracey, 2000;
impact consumer incivility has upon burnout with respect to all Tews et al., 2013). Customer incivility is especially regarded as
three of the specific burnout dimensions. The following hypothesis one of the main job stressors that can accentuate psychological
was developed based upon this reasoning: depletion representing employee burnout, which further causes
employees to become counterproductive in their work behavior
Hypothesis 1. Customer incivility has a positive relationship with (e.g., turnover, absenteeism, poor work quality, etc.).
restaurant frontline service employee burnout Supporting this, several studies have demonstrated the sig-
nificant mediating role employee emotional exhaustion plays in
2.3. The mediating role burnout plays upon the relationships the relationship between job stress and job-related outcomes
between customer incivility and turnover intention (Goldberg and Grandey, 2007). In a more recent study conducted by
Hur et al. (2015), department sales employee’s emotional exhaus-
Burnout derived from job stressors has been found to be strongly tion, one of the burnout sub-dimensions, was found to have a
associated with work withdrawal behavior (Podsakoff et al., 2007; significant mitigating role in the relationship between customer
100 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106

incivility and employee service performance. These findings sug- employees share similar work environments, such as is often the
gest that customer incivility is more likely felt by restaurant case regarding restaurants and hotels.
frontline service employees, contributing to burnout, and leading
further to high levels of turnover intention. Therefore, this study Hypothesis 4. Restaurant supervisory support moderates the
hypothesizes that burnout plays a mediating role on the relation- relationship between customer incivility and frontline service
ship between customer incivility and employee turnover intention. employee burnout. This relationship becomes weaker as employ-
ees’ perceptions about supervisor support improve.
Hypothesis 2. Restaurant frontline service employee burnout
mediates the relationship between customer incivility and
turnover intention.
3. Method

2.4. The moderating role of support on the relationship between 3.1. Measurement
customer incivility and burnout
This study’s measurements were developed by a comprehen-
Early studies stated that support provided by organizations is a sive literature review process that ultimately generated 45 items.
critical factor for increasing positive employee attitudes and behav- A total of 14 items were related to customer incivility, and were
iors (Cohen and Wills, 1985; Day and Bedeian, 1991). Because adopted from the research based upon Burnfield et al. (2004). The
emotional losses caused by job stress can be overcome through 16 burnout items used in this study were adapted from Maslach and
resources such as perceived support, several researchers have doc- Jackson (1981) and represented six emotional exhaustion items,
umented that organizational and interpersonal support enables four emotional depersonalization items and six reduced accom-
employees to reduce their job stress (Demerouti et al., 2014; plishment items. Turnover intention was measured using three
Lindebaum, 2013; Salovey et al., 2002). items from Brashear et al. (2005). These three constructs (cus-
Support provided by their organizations and leaders contributes tomer incivility, burnout and turnover intention) were used as
to enhancing the employee’s emotional bond, which is documented individual-level variables. As business-level variables, organiza-
as being an important determinant of organizational dedication and tional support and supervisory support were measured using 12
commitment (Tian et al., 2014). Research conducted by these indi- items, six for each, based upon published findings (Eisenberger
viduals further demonstrated that a supportive work environment et al., 1997; House, 1986).
plays a significant role in decreasing various workplace stressors In order to refine and test the appropriateness of measurement
and also in improving job performance. Therefore, organizational items generated through a comprehensive review of the literature,
support may be able to intervene between customer incivility and a pilot test was performed using 124 university students having
burnout by attenuating or preventing a stress appraisal response. recently completed frontline service internships with independent
Support has been generally conceptualized to reflect the degree restaurants. All individuals were asked to provide responses to their
that individuals perceive their well-being to be valued by work- restaurant service experiences related to issues involving customer
place sources including supervisors and their organizations in incivility, burnout, organizational support and supervisory support.
which they are embedded (Eisenberger et al., 2002; Ford et al., Information was analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA).
2007; Kossek et al., 2011). Organizational support and supervisory Internal consistency of items for each construct was accesses by
support can be defined as follows: calculating Cronbach’s ␣ coefficients.
Organizational support: Organizational support is defined as Based upon the EFA results, five customer incivility items (e.g.,
“assurance that aid will be available from an organization when it comments about employees’ physical appearance, offensive sex-
is needed to carry out one’s job effectively and to deal with stressful ual comments, personal insulting and verbal attacks) having factor
situations” (George et al., 1993; Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002, p. loading lower than 0.50 and were excluded. Six items affiliated
698). Organizational support is perceived by employees as being with ‘burnout,’ two items related to ‘emotional exhaustion’ (e.g.,
appreciated, which heightens their belief that they have access to “I feel frustrated by my job” and “I feel like I am at the end of
help (Cohen and Wills, 1985; Kossek et al., 2011). Therefore, this my rope”), and one item associated with emotional depersonaliza-
study expects that as individuals perceive more organizational sup- tion (“I feel that I treat some customers as if they were impersonal
port, their emotional and psychological resources for coping with objects) were deleted because of low factor loadings. Two items
customer incivility enables employees to moderate the negative affiliated with ‘reduced accomplishment’ (e.g., “I feel I am positively
impact of customer incivility upon burnout: influencing the lives of others through my work” and “I can easily
create a relaxed atmosphere with my customers”) were removed
Hypothesis 3. Restaurant organizational support moderates the
because they were highly cross-loaded with other constructs. The
relationship between customer incivility and frontline service
final survey, including the remaining 35 items, was approved by the
employee burnout. This relationship becomes weaker as employ-
Institutional Review Board (IRB) to address the ethical and human
ees’ perceptions about organizational support improve.
study portion and was then used as the main survey instrument.
Supervisory support: Supervisory support refers to the degree The survey consists of five parts. The first three parts mea-
to which employees perceive efforts by their supervisor’s con- sure frontline service employee-level variables including five
tributions and care about their well-being (Eisenberger et al., constructs pertaining to customer incivility, burnout (emotional
2002). Supervisors represent various managerial positions (Assis- exhaustion, emotional depersonalization and reduced accom-
tant Managers, General Managers), whom may be able to assist plishment) and turnover intention. Part four was created to
employees with alleviating their psychological stress by provid- measure restaurant business-level variables including two con-
ing programs offering emotional support (George et al., 1993; structs, organizational support and supervisory support. The fifth
Jordan et al., 2002). A study conducted by Halbesleben (2006) doc- part included respondents’ socio-demographics and behavioral
umented that supervisor support plays a significant moderating information. Specifically, the study sought to gather data pertain-
role to decrease various workplace stressors. Based upon these ing to total numbers of years employees worked in the hospitality
research findings, it is anticipated that supervisory support will be environment along with the numbers of different areas where
an important factor for decreasing employee job stress due to cus- these employees were assigned involving frontline service expe-
tomer incivility, specifically in situations where supervisors and riences (reception/reservations, catered events, bussers, servers,
 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106 101

Organizational Supervisory
Restaurant-level Support Support

Customer Turnover
Incivility Burnout
Intention

Frontline service employee-level

Fig. 1. Multilevel research model.

etc.). Selected socio-demographic and behavioral information were Schminke, 2003; Shanock and Eisenberger, 2006). In support of this
used as control variables for this study. approach, it is logical to assume that restaurant employees’ percep-
tions about organizational support and supervisor support should
be strongly dependent upon types and/or levels of support provided
3.2. Data collection and sampling
by their restaurants.
With this in mind, two different levels of restaurant front-
To meet this study’s objectives, a total of 50 locally owned
line service employee perspectives are incorporated within the
independent restaurants unaffiliated with any chain of corporate
study design: (a) the employee-level representing customer inci-
restaurants were selected from a list of food service establishments
vility, burnout and turnover intention, and (b) the business-level
appearing in a publication sponsored by a Florida tourism market-
representing support provided from restaurant organizations and
ing organization located in a highly popular visitor destination. All
supervisors. This study aggregates individual perceptions about
50 restaurant managers were visited by appointment to discuss
support provided from restaurant organizations and supervisors
the study’s purpose and to request permission from management
to business-level variables regarding shared perceptions about
to allow access to frontline service employees prior to starting
restaurants. This study predicts that the relationship between
their shift in order to gain information from them via personal
customer incivility and burnout will be affected by restaurant
interviews, pertaining to the topic of incivility in each particu-
business-level support. Therefore, a multilevel approach designed
lar restaurant’s environment. A total of 28 restaurant managers
to integrate frontline service employee-level variables (customer
agreed to allow interviews with full-time employees working in
incivility, burnout and turnover intention), in conjunction with
their establishment whom had direct experience with providing
restaurant business-level variables (organizational support and
frontline service to restaurant customers for a period of at least
supervisory support), is deemed appropriate to effectively analyze
one year. All respondents were advised as to their rights as human
this study’s data set (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992).
subjects and they were assured that all information provided would
This study focused on investigating the relationships between
be protected under strict confidentiality.
customer incivility, burnout and turnover intention and further
As a condition for their cooperation, each restaurant manager
examining the roles organizational support and supervisory sup-
received an executive summary of the study’s findings. Addition-
port upon those relationships. Customer incivility, job burnout
ally, each employee participating in the study received a $25 gift
and turnover intention were evaluated based upon frontline
card as a token of appreciation for their time and effort. Based upon
service employee experience, while employee perceptions about
the 28 participating restaurants, an average of 17 possible employ-
their organizational support and supervisory support were eval-
ees per restaurant met the study’s criteria for inclusion as potential
uated from the restaurant business-level standpoint. Therefore,
respondents. This ultimately represented an overall total popula-
it is necessary to analyze this study’s data in consideration of
tion of n = 476 restaurant employees whom were made available
both employee- and business-level perspectives. Accordingly, a
for inclusion as potential study respondents. From this total, n = 300
multilevel analysis approach was deemed appropriate and thus,
employees were randomly selected for interview. Using five trained
hierarchical linear modeling was developed by aggregating indi-
surveyors, n = 228 interviews were completed during a four week
viduals’ perceptions about organizational support and supervisory
period, generating a useable response rate of 76%.
support to the restaurant business-level variables (Raudenbush,
1998). HLM 7.0 statistic program was used to test hypotheses (see
3.3. Date analysis: hierarchical liner modeling Fig. 1).

Organizational behavior research documents that because

employees’ perceptions about their organizations are shaped upon 4. Results
how their organizations meet their expectations, implying that
employees within the same organization have a shared and similar 4.1. Validity and reliability of measurements
evaluation. Thus, research asserts that individual-level percep-
tions about organizations should be aggregated to a group-level To confirm construct validity in terms of convergent and dis-
of shared perceptions about organizations (Covin and Slevin, 1989; criminant validity and reliability, first-order and second-order
Schminke et al., 2000). Several research studies also used a mul- confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted due to the
tilevel approach to integrate individual-level and business-level multi-dimensional concept of burnout which has been empirically
relationships between employees and organizations (Ambrose and proven in previous literature (Marsh and Bailey, 1993). Result of
102 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106

Table 2 Null models containing no frontline service employee-level or

Validity and reliability of measures.
restaurant business-level variables were tested to assure that sig-
Variables CCR AVE Cronbach’s ␣ nificant variances exist in dependent variables (Woltman et al.,
Frontline service employee-level variables 2012). Two separate null hierarchical models containing burnout
Customer Incivility .898 .502 .926 and turnover intention were tested. Chi-square tests revealed
Burnout .784 .520 .732 that between-restaurants variances were significantly different
Emotional exhaustion (EE) .822a .537 .903 in burnout ( 00 , t = 20.10; 2 = 171.30, p < 0.001) and in turnover
Emotional depersonalization (ED) .752 .505 .793
intention ( 00 , t = 20.05; 2 = 87.76, p < 0.001) which in turn support
Reduced accomplishment (RD) .845 .582 .834
Turnover Intention .723 .503 .762 justification for using cross-level analyses (Luke, 2004).
Restaurant-level variables
Organizational Support .856 .504 .872
4.3. Hierarchical linear modeling results
Supervisory Support .881 .554 .925

Notes: ␹2 /df = 1.967 (p < .01), CFI = .920, TLI = .902, RMSEA = .065; CCR = composite
4.3.1. Tests for hypotheses 1 and 2
construct reliability; AVE = average variance extracted; (R) indicates an item Hypothesis 1 predicted that customer incivility is positively
reversely coded; a Numbers in italics represent a second-order measurement model related to burnout. Model 1 included four control variables and
for burnout. no restaurant business-level variable, and investigated the rela-
tionship between customer incivility and burnout at the frontline
the first CFA showed a reasonable fit indices: comparative fit index service employee-level (see Table 4). The result indicated that
(CFI) = .920, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = .902, root mean square error customer incivility is significantly and positively associated with
of approximation (RMSEA) = .065 (Hu and Bentler, 1999). Conver- burnout ( = 0.18, p < 0.01). This finding is consistent with a previ-
gent validity was supported because standardized factor loadings ous research study (Kern and Grandey, 2009) investigating the role
for all 35 items are above 0.60 and statistically significant (p < .01) of customer incivility in the context of a national retail store and
(Anderson and Gerbing, 1991). further demonstrates that frequency of customer incivility signifi-
All constructs in the research model were acceptable (see cantly increases levels of employee job stress. Therefore, hypothesis
Table 2). Composite construct reliability (CCR > .70) and average 1 was supported.
variance extracted (AVE > .50) were acceptable exceeding the rec- Hypothesis 2 expected that burnout plays a significant medi-
ommended values (Hair et al., 1998). Cronbach’s ␣ coefficients ating role upon the relationship between customer incivility and
ranged from .762 to .926 implied high internal consistency among turnover intention. In doing so, three preconditions should be met
the variables within each factor (Nunnally, 1978). by showing the significant relationships between (1) customer
The second-order CFA focused primarily on assessing the incivility and turnover intention, (2) burnout and turnover inten-
higher-order factor, “burnout” that was structured with emotional tion, and (3) customer incivility and burnout (Baron and Kenny,
exhaustion, emotional depersonalization and reduced accomplish- 1986; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1998). Model 1 demonstrated the
ment. Standardized factor loadings of three sub-dimensions were significant relationship between customer incivility and turnover
all significant and above .60. Also, the AVE value of the burnout intention, showing that precondition (1) was met. Model 2 iden-
construct was .520, providing support that convergent validity and tified the significant relationship between burnout and employee
composite construct reliability were both acceptable (CCR = .784). job turnover intention ( = 0.53, p < 0.001). Model 3 revealed the
Table 3 presents the means, standard deviations and correla- significant relationship between customer incivility and turnover
tion coefficients of the five constructs representing frontline service intention ( = 0.13, p < 0.01). These results implied that precondi-
employee-level and restaurant business-level variables. The corre- tions (2) and (3) were met. The mediating effect model was then
lation analysis shows that customer incivility is positively related to tested to evaluate whether or not the relationship between cus-
both burnout and turnover intention. Organizational support and tomer incivility and turnover intention would still be significant
supervisory support are negatively associated with the three other when burnout was included. Model 4 revealed a significant variance
constructs representing customer incivility, burnout and turnover in turnover intention when burnout was simultaneously used as the
intention. Discriminant validity was supported because all of the individual-level variable, however, the effect of customer incivility
square roots of the average variance extracted (AVE) ranged from upon turnover intention was not significant ( = 0.09, p > 0.05). This
.708 to .744 and were greater than those correlations for each pair finding as seen in Table 4, implied that the relationship between
of constructs (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). customer incivility and turnover intention was fully mediated by
burnout. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported.
4.2. Multilevel validity testing
4.3.2. Tests for hypotheses 3 and 4
To justify the appropriateness for using a multilevel approach, In order to assure justification for further cross-level analyses,
one-way ANOVA tests were conducted. Results for each of the random-intercept hierarchical model with consumer incivil-
the two restaurant business-level variables (organizational sup- ity as a frontline service employee-level predictor and burnout
port and supervisory support) showed that the variance shared as a frontline service employee -level dependent variable was
between-restaurant employees was significantly greater than the tested and generated a significant between-restaurant variance
within-restaurant employees (F = 4.706, p < .000; F = 7.237, p < .000). (2 = 40.39, p < 0.05).
In addition, two intraclass correlations (ICC[1] and ICC[2]) were Hypotheses 3 and 4 predicted that organizational support and
calculated (McGraw and Wong, 1996). All of the ICC[1] values supervisory support play an important moderating role upon cus-
for organizational support were ranged from 0.24 to 0.35 and tomer incivility and burnout. Model 5 indicated that organizational
were satisfied with criteria ranging between 0.05 and 0.50 (James, support ( = −0.13, p < 0.01) and supervisory support ( = −0.09,
1982). Also, all of the ICC[2] values for supervisory support ran- p < 0.05) have a significant cross-level interaction effect upon the
ging 0.78–0.86 were acceptable that exceeded the threshold value relationship between customer incivility and burnout. This result
of 0.50 (Klein and Kozlowski, 2000). These results indicated that implied that support provided by restaurant organizations and
aggregating our data regarding individual evaluations about orga- supervisors significantly weakens the relationship between cus-
nizational support and supervisory support provided by their tomer incivility and burnout. Therefore, hierarchical linear model
restaurants to a business- level was appropriate. analyses provide evidence that the positive relationship between
 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106 103

Table 3
Correlations and discriminant validity (n = 228).

Mean Std. dev. 1 2 3 4 5

1. Customer incivility 3.10 1.29 .708a

2. Burnout 2.56 1.23 .429b ** .721
3. Turnover intention 2.87 1.62 .280* .687** .710
4. Organizational support 5.24 1.33 −.255** −.581** −.585** .710
5. Supervisory support 5.20 1.42 −.195** −.423** −.416** .645** .744
a
Diagonal elements (in bold) are the square root of the average variance extracted (AVE).
b
Off-diagonal elements are the correlations among constructs.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.

Table 4
Hierarchical linear modeling results.

Hypothesis 1 Hypothesis 2 Hypotheses 3 & 4

Burnout Turnover intention Turnover intention Turnover intention Burnout

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Coeff t Coeff t Coeff t Coeff t Coeff t

Employee-level
Intercept ( 00 ) 2.63 19.83*** 2.92 20.06*** 2.91 20.06*** 2.91 20.04*** 2.57 27.31***
Hoursa ( 10 ) −0.01 −0.87 −0.01 −1.37 −0.01 −0.72 −0.01 −1.06 −0.01 −1.06
Age ( 20 ) −0.01 −2.33* −0.03 −4.17*** −0.01 −1.22 −0.03 −2.48* −0.01 −0.87
Experienceb ( 30 ) 0.08 1.10 −0.24 −2.69** −0.03 −2.84** −0.02 −2.31* −0.01 −1.23
Gender ( 40 ) 0.15 1.43 0.13 0.98 0.23 1.35 0.27 1.67 0.19 1.86
Customer incivility (CI) ( 50 ) 0.18 2.95** 0.13 2.89** 0.09 1.36 0.17 3.06**
Burnout (BO) ( 50 ) 0.53 5.24*** 0.36 5.23***

Restaurant-level
Organizational support (OS) ( 01 ) −0.44 −5.37***
Supervisory support (SS) ( 01 ) −0.27 −3.44**

Cross-level interactions
CI × OS ( 51 ) −0.13 −2.45**
CI × SS ( 51 ) −0.09 −1.79*
Total R2 0.29 0.52 0.46 0.54 0.41
Deviance 575.66 700.92 672.44 705.65 569.4

Note: Information pertaining to the statistical details associated with each of the five models is available upon request from the corresponding author.
a
Hours = Work hours per week.
b
Experience = How many places you have worked in the hospitality industry.
*
p < 0.05.
**
p < 0.01.
***
p < 0.001.

customer incivility and burnout could be reduced based upon employee burnout and their turnover intention. At the restaurant
employee perceptions about support provided by their restaurant business-level, all other hypotheses were tested and supported by
companies and supervisors. Hypotheses 3 and 4 were supported. showing that organizational and supervisory support has signifi-
cant the cross-level interaction effects on the relationship between
customer incivility and burnout. Results for all hypotheses tests are
5. Discussion presented in Table 5.

5.1. Conclusions 5.2. Theoretical implications

This study’s findings contribute to the existing body of knowl- Results from the study’s findings provide several theoretical
edge by providing empirical support for the importance of clearly implications from the hospitality frontline service employee per-
understanding customer incivility and its relationships specific to spective involving customer incivility and its effects. The primary
the restaurant workplace environment. Even though contemporary contribution of this study to the existing hospitality management
researchers have begun to realize the need for research studies
that investigate customer incivility and its effects on employee
Table 5
turnover, existing literature has generally neglected the topic of
Results of testing hypotheses.
customer incivility specifically applied to the restaurant industry.
Therefore, this study was the first attempt to identify the relation- Hypothesis Result
ships between customer incivility, burnout, and further turnover H1: Customer incivility → Burnout Positively related Supported
intention from the perspective of frontline restaurant service H2: Customer incivility → Burnout Fully mediated Supported
employees. In addition, this study provides a better understanding → Turnover intention
H3: Organizational Support → Negatively moderated Supported
regarding the role support at the restaurant business-level plays Customer incivility — Turnover
upon the relationships between customer incivility and burnout. Intention
Pertaining to the frontline service employee-level analysis, two H4: Supervisor Support → Negatively moderated Supported
hypotheses were tested and results supported our expectations the Customer incivility — Turnover
Intention
significant and positive relationships between customer incivility,
104 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106

literature is to highlight customer incivility and its relationship the organizations and supervisors, and its ability to reduce the influ-
employee’s psychological outcome which is closely related to a high ence of customer incivility upon restaurant frontline service
level of turnover intention. employee burnout. Addition, this study revealed that organiza-
One recent study (Karatepe, 2015) proposed that service tional support and supervisory support play significantly important
employees may be more frequently exposed to high job stress situ- roles in mitigating the relationship between customer incivility and
ations involving customer incivility. In the restaurant workplace employee burnout. This result supports the COR theory’s position
environment, one-time customer interaction is common (Gutek that suggests socio-emotional resource investments may be the
et al., 1999). This lends itself to customers taking advantage of most appropriate form of employee support to overcome emotional
their anonymity when treating service employees in an uncivil depletion (Hobfoll, 1989; Lee and Ashforth, 1996).
manner (Wilson and Holmvall, 2013). Many emotional labor stud- Organizational support was found to have a greater interac-
ies revealed that frontline restaurant employees have suffered tion effect for reducing the impact of customer incivility upon
job stress because their particular work environment represents burnout, than did supervisory support. Conversely, Kossek et al.’s
demanding workloads that often involve unpleasant social interac- (2011) proposition asserting that supervisory support may be more
tions with customers due to internal regulations pertaining to how influential than organizational support for encouraging employ-
frontline employee emotions are expressed in situations related to ees specifically in the interdependent teamwork environment,
customer incivility (Grandy, 2003; Jung and Yoon, 2014; Hülsheger is contradictory to our findings. However, our study’s findings
and Schewe, 2011; Shani et al., 2014; Sliter et al., 2010). In consider- are submitted as being reasonable due to the fact that respon-
ation of this situation, this study was the first attempt to empirically dents were frontline service employees working in a restaurant
demonstrate the significant and negative relationship customer environment where much of the service encounters occurred
incivility has upon restaurant frontline service employee burnout. independently (i.e. tableside service encounters), and without
This study adopted a resource-based approach using the supervisory involvement.
COR theory in order to clearly understand the relationships
between customer incivility, burnout and turnover intention in 5.3. Practical implications
the restaurant industry. Results provide evidence demonstrating
that psychological resource depletion due to customer incivility is Given that customer incivility is a prevalent phenomenon in
significantly related to employee workplace attitudes and behav- the labor-intensive restaurant industry which is notorious for high
iors. This is consistent with previous research findings (Adams and employee turnover rates (Collins, 2010; Lu and Gursoy, 2013), iden-
Webster, 2013; Sliter et al., 2012) suggesting that customer incivil- tifying an effective approach which can moderate the negative
ity is one important factor significantly influencing job stress and impact of customer incivility toward employees should be part of
emotional exhaustion. a long term business strategy. Generally, customer incivility has
This study’s findings support that employee burnout plays a been assumed to be negatively related to employee workplace
mediating role upon the relationship between customer incivil- attitudes and behaviors. This study’s approach to better under-
ity and turnover intention. Previous customer incivility studies standing consumer incivility was applied specifically to the context
demonstrated that emotional exhaustion plays a mediating role regarding customer incivility experienced by frontline restaurant
upon the relationship between customer incivility and customer service employees. Adopting this approach, our findings suggest
oriented behavior (Kern and Grandey, 2009; van Jaarsveld et al., that employees having positively evaluated support provided by
2010). However, this study integrated the comprehensive concept their organizations and supervisors are more likely to control and
of employee burnout (emotional exhaustion, emotional deperson- overcome negative impacts of customer incivility. Based upon these
alization and reduced accomplishment), and provided evidence findings, several specific practical implications are suggested.
that customer incivility leads to a high level of turnover inten- Actionable results based upon these research findings suggest
tion through employee burnout. This finding supports the COR that restaurant supervisors and managers begin to have frontline
theory proposition that depletion of emotional and psychological service employees categorize those critical incidents representing
resources derived from customer incivility causes burnout, and as issues pertaining to customer incivility. Then using this informa-
a result, implies that employees tend to conserve their resources tion, scenarios can be developed to educate all frontline service
and become more likely to terminate their jobs. employees on techniques that may be employed to defuse and
Existing restaurant literature has focused on internal factors better address specific customer incivility situations. Furthermore,
(i.e., employee compensation, benefits and internal conflicts) that information should be documented by frontline service employees
are closely related to employee turnover, in order to examine describing techniques appearing to work more successfully than
how restaurants could effectively reduce their employee turnover others. Constantly monitoring this program’s results could be coor-
rates (Collins, 2010; Lynn, 2002). However, no research to date dinated by a ‘rotating nucleus’ of frontline service employees, to be
has investigated the power of the external factor (customer inci- regularly discussed at employee meetings.
vility) upon restaurant employee turnover rates. Therefore, this An important sub-strategy would be for restaurant management
study successfully documents that customer incivility significantly to carefully log employees involved with customer incivility issues
increases restaurant frontline service employee turnover intention to decide if certain employees are actually in need of more detailed
and proposes that customer incivility should be addressed in future observational sessions by management, perhaps also integrating
scholarly, academic hospitality literature as an important research these training sessions with frontline service team leaders. A result
topic. of this could be the development of ‘buddy systems’ representing
Study results also offer theoretical implications involving sup- frontline service employees having experienced fewer customer
port provided by the restaurant business-level. It is necessary for incivility encounters with those employees documented as having
the hospitality industry to identify how to best assist employees been involved with multiple customer incivility situations.
with overcoming negative impacts due to customer incivility. Exit- Another practical implication would be for managers to actually
ing restaurant literature has demonstrated the positive and direct be present regularly in the restaurant dining area so that a ‘supervi-
effects organizational support (Kim et al., 2005) and coworker sup- sory’ presence is clearly visible to employees and customers alike.
port (Susskind et al., 2007) have upon employee job satisfaction Ease of access to management by customers and employees could
and customer service. However, this study specifically investi- reduce many potentially difficult situations before they elevated
gates the moderating role of support offered by both restaurant into confrontational and uncivil incidents.
 S.J. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 52 (2016) 97–106 105

Restaurants should take into account providing better mone- Another study limitation was that this study adopted and used
tary and emotional job conditions in order to achieve a competitive scales developed by organizational behavior researchers in order to
edge among other businesses also involved with the recruitment, evaluate restaurant customer incivility, which may not be able to
selection and retention process for those most desirable frontline fully reflect a restaurant-specific workplace environment. There-
service employees desiring employment in the restaurant indus- fore, future research should develop scales specific to restaurant
try. Restaurants need to regularly review employee performance customer incivility in order to properly address uncivil customer
and offer meaningful rewards and incentives for providing excel- behavior unique to the restaurant workplace environment.
lent service performances. As an example, restaurant supervisors Our final limitation offers direction for future research, and
and organizational management could develop meaningful, cus- involves incivility issues that may be experienced between employ-
tomized employee loyalty programs in conjunction with input from ees and management. This current study’s objective purposely
frontline service employees. This strategy could generate much focused on incivility between restaurant customers and frontline
more applicable information used for establishing obtainable goals service employees working within that setting. Future research
leading to employee incentives that are considered to be important needs to consider the mitigating circumstances involving burnout
benefits to them. and turnover as related to ‘internal’ work environment experiences.
Well-structured training programs should be developed and Comments pertaining to incivility experienced directly from other
continuously re-evaluated to optimize the importance frontline employees, as well as from managers, or directed to managers,
service employee performances have upon the entire restaurant. should be investigated in future research addressing incivility
When employees understand the critically important role they rep- within the hospitality setting.
resent to the entire success of the restaurant business, and their
organization holds them in high regard because of this, training pro-
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