Stress on Frontline Employees from Customer Aggression in the Restaurant Industry: The Moderating Effect of Empowerment

In service industries such as restaurants, abusive customer (jay-customer) behaviors may evoke emotional exhaustion and burnout in frontline employees, threatening job satisfaction well sustainable management the hospitality industry. Therefore, there is a need to identify whether (and what degree) stress employees enough affect their mental health, which lead employee turnover. To understand jay-customer restaurant setting, this study investigated factors of that induce decrease satisfaction. Additionally, moderating effect empowerment was tested see decreases caused by behaviors. Data collected from 302 several cities South Korea were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate three types (verbal abuse, physical sexual harassment) are directly related employees’ stress, turn, reduces A on relationship between verbal abuse found. suggest conceptual model for understanding process jay-customers negatively influence well-being, they provide valuable implications industry, can help develop strategies improve welfare better management.