The Impacts of Emotional Contagion and Emotional Labor Perception on Employees' Service Performance

This study took the service provider’s perspective to investigate the connections among customers’ positive and negative mood states and employees’ mood, emotional labor perception, and service performance. It also examined the impact of self-monitoring and social support on these connections. We used questionnaires to survey 314 customer contact employees. We found that customer mood did affect employees’ mood and their emotional labor perceptions, and that employees’ self-monitoring moderated the relationship between customer mood and employees’ emotional labor perception. Additionally, when customers were in a good mood, employees’ emotional labor perception was negatively related to employees’ service performance, while employees’ self-monitoring moderated the relationship between customer mood and employee mood. When employees were in a bad mood, the degree of social support they obtained moderated the relationship between their mood and service performance. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research were also provided.