Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

William F. Harrah College of Hospitality

First Committee Member

Cass Shum

Second Committee Member

Billy Bai

Third Committee Member

Amanda Belarmino

Fourth Committee Member

Richard Gardner

Number of Pages

305

Abstract

Social media platforms and their users have kept growing nowadays. Although previous literature demonstrated that the first-person observation of customer mistreatment could spill over impact beyond victims, the effect of social media posts about customer mistreatment (in the form of video) is still unknown. This dissertation investigates the effect of social media posts about customer mistreatment on viewers’ behavioral intention (i.e., commenting intention and perception of brand reputation) via their moral emotions (i.e., affective empathy toward victims and moral anger toward organizations). The moderating role of organizational power messages and the three-way interaction with moral ownership are tested in order to fully understand how and when viewers shape their moral emotions. This dissertation proposes that a power-balancingmessage amplifies the positive relationship between social media posts about customer mistreatment and their moral emotions. Viewers with high moral ownership will have strong moral reactions regardless of the types of organizational power messages; however, when viewers with low ownership, their moral reactions still depend on the types of organizational power messages. By manipulating the social media posts about customer mistreatment and organizational power messages while measuring moral ownership, we use a scenario-based quasi-experiment to test the theoretical model in Study 1. To concurrently collect quantitative and qualitative data in the same phase, we adopt a convergent parallel survey design in Study 2. Participants recall a customer mistreatment social media post and rate their moral emotions, brand reputation, and commenting behaviors. The results provided support to the main effect of social media posts about customer mistreatment on viewers’ affective empathy and moral anger. Besides, moral anger mediated the relationship between social media posts about customer mistreatment and viewers’ commenting intention. Such results brought theoretical contribution by applying the deontic justice theory to social media posts about customer mistreatment instead of organizational behavior in a hospitality setting. This dissertation proved that customer mistreatment in the form of social media posts could spill over to social media users. Accordingly, hospitality practitioners should have zero tolerance for customer mistreatment in any form. Additionally, they should manage their social media page and monitor any posts about customer mistreatment.

Disciplines

Work, Economy and Organizations

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Wednesday, May 15, 2030


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