Reciprocal relations between emotional exhaustion and episode-specific emotional labour: An experience-sampling study

ABSTRACT

Service employees’ surface acting is exhausting, but it is unclear if exhaustion appears instantly after a single service episode. Moreover, evidence regarding the reversed causality in which exhaustion predicts surface acting is scarce and unequivocal. Our experience-sampling study investigates dynamic reciprocal relations between service employees’ exhaustion and surface acting, and additionally deep acting, across two service episodes, the first one of the day and the last one before lunchtime. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we hypothesised that exhaustion is an antecedent of episode-specific surface acting and that episode-specific surface acting is an antecedent of exhaustion directly following the service episode. During five days, 120 service employees answered three daily surveys between morning and lunchtime. Multilevel path analysis showed that exhaustion before work was not related to first-episode surface acting. First-episode surface acting was positively related to subsequent exhaustion, which was positively related to subsequent surface acting, which was positively related to subsequent exhaustion. Exhaustion experienced after the first service episode was also positively related to subsequent deep acting. Findings highlight the importance of integrating reciprocal relations between exhaustion and surface acting into the emotional labour literature and studying the direct well-being costs of surface acting in single service episodes.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional exhaustion
• dynamic emotional labour
• surface acting
• experience-sampling method
• conservation of resources theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To rule out the option that emotional exhaustion before work predicts surface acting toward the last customer and that surface acting toward the first customer predicts emotional exhaustion after meeting the last customer, we also tested the hypothesised model while controlling for these relationships. Results concerning the hypotheses tests and research questions remained the same.

2 Due to the short time lags and stability of emotional exhaustion between the 3 data points, the results on the between-person level must be interpreted with caution.

3 We tested all hypotheses and research questions also without the inclusion of the control variables. The pattern of the results remained the same.

4 To address the possibility of reciprocal relationships unfolding over the day, in which surface acting is an explaining mechanism between exhaustion experienced at different times of the day and subsequent surface acting, we tested a serial mediation. We started with emotional exhaustion before work predicting surface acting toward the first customer of the day, which then predicts emotional exhaustion after this first episode, which in turn predicts surface acting toward the last customer before lunch, which then predicts subsequent emotional exhaustion. The indirect effect was not significant (indirect effect = .00, SE = .01, p = .61), supporting our view that the reciprocal relationship between surface acting and exhaustion is episode specific.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Mannheim's Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).