The relationship between customer mistreatment and employee’s service sabotage in service industry in Vietnam

Abstract

The research aims to explore the impact of customer mistreatment behavior on service sabotage behavior through the mediating variable emotional exhaustion, and the regulatory role of perceived organizational support. With research data from 449 employees who regularly contact with customers in Vietnam, the data is analyzed according to a process from reliability test to factor determination analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and Bootstrap testing in PROCESS software in SPSS. The results showed that: customer mistreatment behavior positively affects employee’s service sabotage behavior; emotional exhaustion partially mediates the relationship between customer mistreatment behavior and employee’s service sabotage behavior; perceived organizational support moderates the mediation relationship negatively. Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study expands the relevant research on the employee’s service sabotage in the context of Vietnam. In addition, this study also provides suggestions for reducing employee’s service sabotage.