Customer misbehavior and service employees’ emotional exhaustion: Effects of surface acting, involvement, and mental elasticity

Employees in service-oriented enterprises often face the social stressor of customer misbehavior. On the basis of survey data from 503 service employees, we drew the following conclusions: (a) multidimensional customer misbehavior can be replaced by a second-order factor, and customer misbehavior has a significant promoting effect on employees’ emotional exhaustion; (b) employees’ surface acting mediates the impact of customer misbehavior on employees' emotional exhaustion; (c) employees’ involvement acts as a moderator between customer misbehavior and employees’ surface acting; and (d) employees’ mental elasticity has a moderating effect between their surface acting and their emotional exhaustion. According to the research results, managers of enterprises can take targeted measures to minimize the impact of customer misbehavior on the emotional exhaustion of service employees, thus ensuring the physical and mental health of these employees.