Safety or service? Effects of employee prosocial safety-rule-breaking on consumer satisfaction

Cass Shum; Ankita Ghosh

doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2022.103225

Safety or service? Effects of employee prosocial safety-rule-breaking on consumer satisfaction

Int J Hosp Manag. 2022 May:103:103225. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2022.103225. Epub 2022 Apr 19.

Authors

Cass Shum¹, Ankita Ghosh¹

Affiliation

¹ William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway Box 456013, Las Vegas, NV 89154-6021, USA.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic makes restaurants implement new safety rules. However, because of consumers' and employees' resistance, employees may break these rules to improve the service experience. This paper examines how employees' prosocial safety-rule-breakings (PSRB) affect consumer satisfaction. We propose that PSRB has two competing effects on consumers' (including both requesters and bystanders) satisfaction via the mediating roles of service performance and perceived safety. We tested our proposed model in two experiments, adopting a 2 (Consumer role: Requesters vs. Bystanders) × 2 (PSRB level: Low vs. High) between-subject experimental design. Our findings suggest that PSRB has a strong negative relationship with bystanders' service performance rating. PSRB harms both requesters' and bystanders' perceived safety. PSRB reduces consumer satisfaction, and the relationship is stronger for bystanders (vs. requesters). This study demonstrates the importance for hospitality organizations to ensure safety rule compliance during and after the pandemic.

Keywords: CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; COVID-19; COVID-19, Coronavirus Disease 2019; Consumer satisfaction; PSRB, prosocial safety-rule-breakings; Perceived safety; Prosocial rule-breaking; Service performance.