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
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Jiang, Wen, "#Rudecustomers: The effects of social media posts about customer mistreatment on viewers’ moral emotions and reactions" (2023). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 4713.
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/4713
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/