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An Empirical Study on the Airline Service Employees' Psychological Mechanism according to the Emotional Labor

The Journal of Distribution Science / The Journal of Distribution Science, (P)1738-3110; (E)2093-7717
2017, v.15 no.2, pp.111-120
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.15722/jds.15.2.201702.111
Lee, Jun-Seop

Abstract

Purpose - Service employees who work at airline check-in counters in airport are typically employed to undergo emotional labor. Emotional labor of airport service employees is an important managerial issue that must be solved. This study attempts to examine the underlying mechanism of emotional labor on turnover intention. It focuses on the consequences of emotional labor of service employees. The purpose of this study is to examine and empirically test how the two-types of emotional labor(deep-acting & surface-acting) of service employees differently affect the level of their job satisfaction and job stress. It also investigates the relationship between job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intention. For this purpose, first, this study identified the structural relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intention. Second, it investigated the mediating effects of job satisfaction between deep-acting and turnover intention. Research design, data, and methodology - To empirically test these structural relationships among research variables, data were collected by a interview from service manager of domestic airline companies and survey from 179 service employees who are working at single domestic airline check-in counters in airports in Korea using a self-rating questionnaire with total 19 items dealing with emotional labor, job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intention. To test the research hypotheses, collected data were analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structure equation model (SEM). Results - This study obtains meaningful research results. The results from this study are as follows. First, deep-acting has a positive effect on job satisfaction, whereas, deep-acting has a negative effect on job satisfaction. Second, surface-acting has a positive effect on job stress, whereas, the effects of surface-acting on job satisfaction did not show statistically significant result. Also, job satisfaction has partial mediating roles to the relationship between deep-acting and turnover intention. Conclusions - Based on the results of this empirical study, emotional labor of service employees is one of the key factors influencing their job satisfaction and job stress. In particular, deep-acting is the important factor in emotional labor to increase job satisfaction and reduce job stress. Finally, theoretical, managerial implications, and research limitations are mentioned in discussion parts.

keywords
Emotional Labor(Deep-Acting, Surface-Acting), Job Satisfaction, Job Stress, Turnover Intention

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The Journal of Distribution Science