Asia Pacific Journal of Management

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-019-09688-8

The impact of customer incivility on employees’

family undermining: a conservation of resources
perspective

Hong Zhu 1 & Yijing Lyu 2 & Yijiao Ye 2

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
Applying conservation of resources theory, this study focused on the effect of customer
incivility on employees’ family undermining. Specifically, we examined the mediating
effect of work-to-family conflicts and the moderating effects of hostile attribution bias.
We utilized a three-phase survey to collect data from 264 employees in China. Results
indicated that customer incivility exerted a positive impact on work-to-family conflicts,
and these led in turn to family undermining. Moreover, the hostile attribution bias of
employees exacerbated the impact of customer incivility on work-to-family conflicts
and the mediated effect. Both theoretical and managerial implications are discussed in
the study.

Keywords Customer incivility . Work-to-family conflict . Hostile attribution bias . Family

undermining

Customer incivility, described as rude customer behaviors characterized by low inten-

sity and ambiguous intentions, has received increased attention from researchers over
the past decade (Hur, Moon, & Han, 2015; Kern & Grandey, 2009). Research has
found that customer incivility exerts negative influences on employees’ well-being,
work-related attitudes, and job performance, including escalated stress and emotional
exhaustion (Sliter, Jex, Wolford, & Mclnnerney, 2010; Sliter & Jones, 2015), increased

* Yijing Lyu
lyuyijing@163.com

Hong Zhu
zhuhong108@gmail.com
Yijiao Ye
yeyijiao1991@163.com

1
School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China
2
School of Management, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, People’s Republic of China
 H. Zhu et al.

turnover intentions (Han, Boon, & Cho, Bonn, Han, & Lee, 2016; Wilson & Holmvall,
2013), decreased service performance (Cho et al., 2016), and more incivility targeted at
co-workers and customers (Sliter, Withrow, & Jex, 2015; Torres, Niekerk, & Orlowski,
2017).
Despite the increasing interest of researchers in customer incivility, little attention
has been paid to its effects on the family lives of employees. This is unfortunate as
family life tends to be an inordinately pivotal domain for employees beyond their
workplaces and has significant influence on them (Casper, Eby, Bordeaux, Lockwood,
& Lambert, 2007; Liu, Kwan, Lee, & Hui, 2013). As customer incivility occurs
frequently and repeatedly in the workplace, its adverse effects accumulate, compound,
and eventually spill over to employees’ family lives (Ferguson, 2012; Holm, Torkelson,
& Bäckström, 2015; Sliter et al., 2010; Wilson & Holmvall, 2013). Further examination
of the impact of customer incivility on employees’ family lives is therefore meaningful
for employers, employees, and their families. Given the proclivity of the “customer is
always right” philosophy being perpetuated in most service organizations, the preva-
lence of customer incivility can have devastating effects on employees (Han, Bonn, &
Cho, 2016; Human Performance, 2014; Loi, Xu, Chow, & Kwok, 2017). Hence,
researchers have called for more additional studies devoted to the issue of customer
incivility and its effects on employees (Han et al., 2016).
This study appeals to this call and extends the existing consequences of customer
incivility to employees’ family outcomes. In particular, we focus on employees’ family
undermining behaviors, which are aggressive behaviors that impede the establishment
and maintenance of positive interpersonal relationships among family members
(Restubog, Scott, & Zagenczyk, 2011). Customer incivility is a type of daily social
hassle that occurs frequently during interactions between employees and customers
(Sliter, Sliter, Withrow, & Jex, 2012). As employees are required to provide polite
service even when they are treated in socially unacceptable manners by customers (Han
et al., 2016), the accumulation of harm caused by customer incivility might spill over to
employees’ family lives and lead to negative behaviors toward family members.
We further draw upon the conservation of resources (COR) theory to investigate
mediating mechanisms. COR theory suggests that individuals rely on valuable re-
sources to fulfill their central needs. They spare no effort to obtain and conserve
resources when they perceive or feel threatened with resource loss (Hobfoll, 1989).
Denoted as a workplace stressor, customer incivility seriously depletes employees’
resources and hence activates their resource protection mechanism (Han et al., 2016).
To avoid further resource loss, employees may circumvent additional drain by with-
drawing from fulfilling their family obligations (Sliter et al., 2012). This absence in
family life may thus elicit work-to-family conflicts, which denote that responsibilities
in workplace inhibit individuals from performing their roles in the family domain (Wu,
Kwan, Liu, & Resick, 2012). This state of conflicts can generate further stress in
employees and thus bring about hostile behaviors toward their family members (i.e.,
family undermining behaviors).
Furthermore, previous studies suggest that the destructive effects of customer
incivility vary among employees with different characteristics (Cho et al., 2016;
Torres et al., 2017). COR theory indicates that individuals with different traits appraise
resource loss differently (Hobfoll & Lerman, 1989). However, current research has
largely overlooked the boundary conditions of individual characteristics in the literature
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

of customer incivility. To improve our understanding, this research also sheds light on
the boundary conditions under which the effect of customer incivility can be augmented
or alleviated. Specifically, we focus on hostile attribution bias, an important personal
trait that describes the extent to which an individual attributes the worst motives to the
behavior of others and thus blames them for disruptive behavior (Adams & John,
1997). As customer incivility involves ambiguous and low-intensity uncivil behaviors,
individuals who are characterized by high hostile attribution bias may attribute such
behaviors to be deliberate. They thus tend to feel more threatened by customer
incivility, with this potentially leading to work-to-family conflicts that are ultimately
manifested through undermining behaviors toward the family.
We conducted this research in China because it is important and particularly timely
to investigate the impact of customer incivility in Asia, including China. As the Chinese
culture is characterized by a high degree of power distance (Jaw, Ling, Wang, & Chang,
2007), customer incivility should be prevalent in China because it generally results
from power imbalance between customers and employees (Adams & Webster, 2013;
Liu, Kwan, & Chiu, 2014). However, current research has shed little light on this issue
in Asia. To the best of our knowledge, only a few studies have been conducted in Asia
(Hur et al., 2015; Hur, Moon, & Jun, 2016), with most of the others conducted in the
United States and Canada (e.g., Sliter et al., 2012; Torres et al., 2017; Walker, Van
Jaarsveld, & Skarlicki, 2014). Moreover, the Chinese society tends to place strong
emphasis on their family roles and view family harmony as a measure of success in
their lives (Shaffer, Francesco, Joplin, & Lau, 2005). Given the importance of family in
the Asian culture (Wu et al., 2012), it is especially meaningful to fill the research gap
and examine the effect of customer incivility on the family lives of employees in the
context of China.
In sum, this research intends to make several contributions. First, it adds to the
customer incivility literature by linking customer incivility to employees’ family lives
for the first time. It also incorporates the impact of other stakeholders from outside the
workplace who should not be overlooked when examining work and family issues.
Second, the research investigates whether work-to-family conflicts serve as the mech-
anism underlying customer incivility. This helps unravel the “black box” of the
customer incivility process. Moreover, it also contributes to research related to work-
family conflicts by adding a new workplace stressor initiated by sources outside the
organization whose effect spills over to employees’ family lives. Third, this research
examines the moderating role of hostile attribution bias, which strengthens our under-
standing of the boundary conditions under which customer incivility influences em-
ployees. Finally, we empirically test the issue of customer incivility in the service
industry where this phenomenon is widespread yet insufficiently studied.
The conceptual model is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Hypothesis development

Customer incivility

Customer incivility is defined as customers’ rude behaviors that violate social norms for
mutual respect and are conducted with unintentional purpose to hurt the service
 H. Zhu et al.

Customer Work-to-family Family

incivility conflict undermining

Hostile
attribution bias

Fig. 1 Conceptual model of this research

employees (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Typical examples include interrupting ser-
vice employees when they are talking, grumbling about slow service, not thanking
employees for their service, and talking to service employees in a disrespectful or rude
tone (Wilson & Holmvall, 2013).
Customer incivility has three key features. First, it involves rude behavior that
violates social norms for dignity and respect in the process of service delivery. Second,
it is deemed to be ambiguous and unintentional in nature. It is rated as mildly deviant
behavior, and any intent to harm is often unclear to targets, observers, and even the
perpetrators (Pearson, Andersson, & Wegner, 2001; Wilson & Holmvall, 2013). As a
result of this characteristic, organizations might consider customer incivility as innoc-
uous and thus attach minimal importance (Han et al., 2016). Third, customer incivility
occurs very frequently (Sliter et al., 2012). As attending to the needs of customers is the
primary role of service employees, interaction with customers is frequent and often
continuous, thereby establishing a fertile breeding ground for customer incivility
(Dormann & Zapf, 2004). Also, based on the overemphasized importance of customers
in the service industry, they are cognizant of their superior status over service em-
ployees, thereby leading to an elevated probability of customers’ uncivil behavior.
Accordingly, customer incivility occurs so frequently in the service industry that it is
recognized as a daily hassle for service employees (Cortina, Magley, Williams, &
Langhout, 2001; Han et al., 2016).
Previous literature on workplace incivility was mainly restricted to incivility perpe-
trated by individuals inside organizations, including colleagues and supervisors (Chen
et al., 2013; Wilson & Holmvall, 2013). However, researchers suggest that incivility
from customers can happen more frequently and produce even more devastating effects
on employees (Kern & Grandey, 2009; Walker, van Jaarsveld, & Skarlicki, 2017;
Wilson & Holmvall, 2013). Similarly, studies have found that employees experience
customer aggression more frequently than supervisor mistreatment or co-worker ag-
gression (Grandey, Kern, & Frone, 2007; LeBlanc & Kelloway, 2002). As such, we
extend the research focus to incivility perpetrated by customers.

COR theory

As suggested by COR theory, resources are the total capability people possess to obtain
centrally valued ends (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). Resources can be objects, conditions,
states, and other things that people perceive as valuable or helpful in attaining their
goals (Halbesleben, Neveu, Paustian-Underdahl, & Westman, 2014; Hobfoll, 1989).
Resources can originate from oneself or external sources (Wang, Liao, Zhan, & Shi,
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

2011). As individuals appraise the value of resources differently, a broad range of

resources can be identified (Halbesleben et al., 2014). For instance, job security is
considered a type of resource when it facilitates attainment of one’s goals (Halbesleben
et al., 2014; Selenko & Batinic, 2013). Similarly, an individual’s personal traits such as
self-efficacy, self-esteem, and optimism are also personal resources that can benefit
one’s career (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009). Owing to the
valuable nature of resources, individuals not only do their utmost to gain and conserve
them (Hobfoll, 1989, 2002), but they also place great emphasis on curtailing depletion
of their existing resources (Cheek & Buss, 1981; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Whenever
individuals perceive a threat or actual loss of resources, they tend to adopt coping
strategies such as withdrawing resource-consuming activities to protect them and avoid
depleting further resources (Arkin, 1981).
As suggested in previous research, COR theory provides a useful lens to understand
the work-to-family interference issue (Lapierre & Allen, 2006). Based on the perme-
ability and flexibility of work-to-family boundaries, employees’ roles in one domain
can drain their resources, thereby impairing their capacity to meet expectations in the
other, thus resulting in work-family conflicts (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). In the
current research, we apply COR theory to suggest that customer incivility depletes
employees’ resources at the workplace and threatens the resources normally devoted to
family roles, thereby provoking work-to-family conflicts as well as undermining
behaviors toward the family.

The mediating effect of work-to-family conflict

As a conflict that arises when engagement at work makes it difficult for employees to
engage at home (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, & Rosenthal, 1964; Kossek, Pochler,
Bodner, & Hammer, 2001), work-to-family conflict induces stress for most employees
across many industries, especially for employees whose work hours tend to be long and
irregular (Aumann & Galinsky, 2009; Namasivayam & Zhao, 2007; Poelmans, 2005).
Work-to-family conflicts are harmful to employee well-being, job-related attitudes,
work performance, and family performance, including symptoms of depression
(Hammer, Neal, Newsom, Brockwood, & Colton, 2005; Wallace, 2005), decreased
affective commitment, increased intentions of leaving (Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Martha,
2000; Chen, Brown, Bowers, & Chang, 2015), decreased job performance (Netemeyer,
Maxham III, & Pullig, 2005), and hostility at home (Eby, Casper, Lockwood,
Boraeaux, & Brinley, 2005).
Drawing on COR theory, we argue that customer incivility is a chronic workplace
stressor that drains employees’ resources, thus impeding their roles in family life and
generating work-family conflicts. First, customer incivility leads to time-based work-family
conflict, which denotes that employees have difficulty in meeting expectations at home
because of the preoccupation with roles or events at work while physically attempting to
fulfill family responsibilities (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985).
Customer incivility is a chronic job stressor that consistently drains employees’ valuable
resources (Han et al., 2016; Wilson & Holmvall, 2013). When employees start serving
customers, they usually expect to receive appreciation (Sliter et al., 2012). Once they are
uncivilly treated by customers, the unrealized expectation of positive acknowledgement may
drive further resource investment at work, thereby expending resources that would otherwise
 H. Zhu et al.

be invested in family life (Sliter et al., 2012). When faced with customer incivility,
employees are often preoccupied by perceptions of resource drain and thus endeavor to
prevent further resource loss by reducing their time spent in family life. As a result, time-
based work-family interference conflicts are generated.
Second, customer incivility generates strain-based work-family conflicts, a form of
tension that interferes between work and family (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Carlson,
Kacmar, & Williams, 2000). As customer incivility is a hurtful encounter, employees
faced with such unfavorable experiences might be immersed in negative emotional
states such as anger and sadness (Li, Ashkanasy, & Mehmood, 2017). However, as
organizations in the service industry usually have formal and strict rules about avoiding
negative emotional displays in the process of service delivery (Diefendorff, Richard, &
Croyle, 2006), employees suffering from customer incivility are not allowed to express
their negative feelings (Sliter et al., 2010). Instead, they must follow these regulations
by tolerating the distasteful experiences while treating these uncivil customers with
patience and courtesy (Walker et al., 2014), thus sapping even more of their resources
(Sliter et al., 2010). As a result, this intense strain interferes with their family roles and
leads to an exacerbated strain-based work-family conflict.
Third, customer incivility is also related to behavior-based work-to-family conflicts,
that is, one is unable to adjust work roles to meet expectations at home (Greenhaus &
Beutell, 1985). As a type of daily social hassle, customer incivility violates one’s sense
of respect and dignity (Bies & Moag, 1986) and triggers uncivil behaviors toward
customers or coworkers (Torres et al., 2017; Walker et al., 2014). With the painful
experiences of customer incivility at work, employees are likely to carry these uncivil
experiences into their family sphere and exhibit uncivil behaviors toward family
members, thus generating behavior-based work-family conflicts. Moreover, customer
incivility seriously strips employees’ resources and activates their defense mechanisms
to guard them (e.g., Han et al., 2016). When employees leave work to return home, it is
quite likely that they still harbor anxiety and perceive severe resource drain; therefore,
they may react by attempting to prevent further loss of resources by decreasing efforts
to meet their familial requirements.
Based on the above arguments, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 1 Customer incivility is positively related to work-to-family conflict.

Work-to-family conflict indicates a condition under which the role in the workplace
drains employees’ resources that might be better applied in the family role. (Grandey &
Cropanzano, 1999). In other words, the work roles are overwhelming and incompatible
with familial roles (Allen et al., 2000). Following the tenets of COR theory (Hobfoll,
1989), more resources might be sapped when struggling between work and family
roles, which means that a resource loss spiral might occur when employees experience
work-to-family conflict. Moreover, after perceiving resource depletion, individuals are
less likely to control their reactions and behaviors in socially appropriate ways
(Hobfoll, 1989). Accordingly, work-to-family conflicts might redirect improper behav-
iors toward family members because they may be perceived as comparatively safe and
vulnerable targets on which to vent aggression. Specifically, employees might engage
in family undermining behaviors, such as losing their temper over trivial matters or
sneering at family members.
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

Furthermore, COR theory also suggests that when individuals are threatened by
resource loss, their hopes or expectations for achieving success in life are compromised,
thus triggering additional stress (Hobfoll, 1989). Specifically, when employees experi-
ence work-to-family conflicts, they may become frustrated with their failure to meet
demands both at work and at home. This can erode their confidence in their ability to
develop close relationships or gain promotions (Lapierre & Allen, 2006). As a result of
this resource-draining process, employees in negative mental states might engage in
family undermining behaviors to release the frustration generated from these conflicts
(Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999). Moreover, they may also perceive the family role as a
source of resource depletion and blame the conflict on their family members, thereby
instigating family undermining behaviors such as hostility, apathy, and other detrimen-
tal behaviors that might damage their interpersonal relationships with other family
members. Similarly, previous research has provided empirical evidence of the link
between work-family conflict and family undermining (Wu et al., 2012). We thus
propose the following:

Hypothesis 2 Work-to-family conflict is positively related to family undermining.

We propose that customer incivility leads to work-family conflicts, and the aroused
conflicts further trigger undermining behavior towards the family. This proposed
mediating effect is based on COR theory, which contends that the perception of
resource loss discourages further resource investment in other domains and that
individuals are less likely to control their behaviors in a socially appropriate manner
when threatened with resource loss (Hobfoll, 1989).

Hypothesis 3 Work-to-family conflict serves as the mediator between customer inci-

vility and family undermining.

The moderating effect of hostile attribution bias

COR theory suggests that people with different traits appraise resource loss dissimilarly
(Hobfoll & Lerman, 1989). Likewise, previous research indicates that although cus-
tomer incivility can be universally painful for employees, the extent to which it affects
employees differs among individuals with various characteristics (Cho et al., 2016;
Torres et al., 2017). Here we focus on the role of hostile attribution bias, an important
trait that captures the extent to which an individual tends to consider the behavior of
others as hostile (Crick & Dodge, 1996; Dodge & Crick, 1990).
People who are high in hostile attribution bias may interpret unfavorable behaviors
as inimical even when it does not appear to be the case (Matthews & Norris, 2002;
Milich & Dodge, 1984). Facing an ambiguous environment, individuals who are
characterized by high hostile attribution bias tend to regard the misbehavior of others
as intentional (Dodge & Crick, 1990). On the contrary, those low in this trait prefer to
ascribe misbehavior to external elements and interpret the behavior as justifiable.
Customer incivility is characterized by low intensity and high ambiguity, with
unclear intention to harm the target (Henkel, Boegershausen, Rafaeli, & Lemmink,
2017; Torres et al., 2017). To the extent that employees who are high in hostile
 H. Zhu et al.

attribution bias will interpret ambiguous mistreatment as hostile, they are naturally
more vulnerable to customer incivility and likely to be more negatively impacted, thus
resulting in substantial resource drain. In this case, these employees may endeavor
harder to withhold their remaining resources, constrain resource investment in family
activities, and trigger a high level of work-to-family conflicts. Conversely, employees
who are low in hostile attribution bias might interpret customer incivility as unintended,
thus limiting the effects of the unfavorable experiences and avoiding the possibility of
more severe conflicts developing at home.

Hypothesis 4 Hostile attribution bias serves as the moderator between customer inci-
vility and work-to-family conflict in such a manner that the association is strengthened
with higher hostile attribution bias.

In sum, we have hypothesized a comprehensive theoretical model in which work-to-

family conflicts mediate between customer incivility and employees’ undermining
toward their families, and hostile attribution bias serves as a moderator between
customer incivility and work-to-family conflicts. We thus infer that people with high
hostile attribution bias will be more affected by customer incivility and therefore more
apt to exhibit undermining behaviors that target family members.

Hypothesis 5 Hostile attribution bias serves as the moderator among the mediating
effects of customer incivility, work-to-family conflicts, and family undermining.

Methods

Data collection

Respondents in this study were front-line service employees who lived with at least one
family member at two hotels in Mainland China. We distributed questionnaires in three
phases over 6 months to diminish common method variance (Podsakoff, MacKenzie,
Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). In the first phase, employees reported demographic infor-
mation (gender, age, education, tenure, and number of children living in the household
aged 18 years old or younger), perception of customer incivility, customer sexual
harassment, and hostile attribution bias. In the second phase (3 months later), em-
ployees reported work-family conflicts. Three months after that, the third-phase survey
was conducted wherein employees reported any family undermining behaviors.
Human resource managers of the target hotels assisted by providing us with a list of
potential participants based on the purpose of the study. They also helped explain the
procedures for collecting data. To match employees’ questionnaires across time, we
assigned each respondent a unique number based on the information provided by the
human resource managers and marked these on the questionnaires before distribution.
The employees were given the survey questionnaires along with a return envelope. All
participants were briefed that the survey was conducted to enhance the understanding
of human resource practices. Moreover, each participant was assured of the confiden-
tiality, anonymity, and voluntary nature of the survey.
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

Five hundred and ninety surveys were distributed, and 427 completed surveys were
received during the first phase, thus generating a 72.37% response rate. In the second
phase, we received 312 completed questionnaires for a 73.07% response rate. In the
final phase, 264 completed questionnaires we received, resulting in a response rate of
84.62%. We matched questionnaires across the three phases and achieved a final
sample consisting of 264 employees, of whom 54.92% were male and 53.79% were
30 years old or younger. Of the targeted employees, 79.92% held a high school degree
or below. The average organizational tenure was 1.87 years. In addition, the average
number of underage children living with them was .87.

Measures

All scales used in this study were originally developed in English. We translated the scales
from English to Chinese following the back-translation procedure (Brislin, 1980). More-
over, to ensure that all items could be generalized to the research context, we consulted
several employees in the targeted hotels following the recommendation of Schaffer and
Riordan (2003). We rated all items from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree.”
For customer incivility, we adopted an eleven-item scale from Sliter et al. (2012) to
measure employees’ perceptions of customer incivility. Two sample items were the
following: “customers take out anger on me” and “customers have taken out their
frustrations on me.” Customer incivility had an estimated reliability of .94 in this study.
For hostile attribution bias, we adopted Adams and John’s (1997) scale with six
items. One example of the items was “people would be better off if they don’t trust
anyone.” Validity of this scale has been demonstrated by previous research conducted
within a Chinese context (Lyu, Zhu, Zhong, & Hu, 2016). The estimated reliability of
hostile attribution bias in our study was .80.
A nine-item measurement from Carlson et al. (2000) was adopted for work-to-
family conflict. One sample item was “the problem-solving behaviors I use at work are
not effective in resolving problems at home.” The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale in our
study was .86.
For family undermining, we adopted a three-item measurement from Westman and
Vinokur (1998). An example item was “I am tired with my family members.” The
validity of this scale has been demonstrated by Wu et al. (2012) in their study
previously conducted in China. The estimated reliability of this scale was .85.
For control variables we used gender, age, education, tenure in the organization, and
number of children living with them aged 18 years old or younger. Previous research
has indicated that these variables are associated with family-related issues (Wu et al.,
2012). To control for the variance attributed to hotels, we created two dummy variables
and entered one of them into regression to account for multicollinearity (Smith &
Sasaki, 1979). In addition, as workplace sexual harassment has been proven to be
influential to family undermining (Liao, Liu, Kwan, & Tian, 2016), we also controlled
for customer sexual harassment to rule out any potential impact. We adopted a twenty-
one-item scale from Murry, Sivasubramaniam, and Jacques (2001) to measure customer
sexual harassment. A sample item was “In the past year, customers have offered me sex
in return for a favor.” A single second-order factor fitted the data well, with χ2 (185) =
682.87, TLI = .91, CFI = .92, and RMSEA = .10. The Cronbach’s alpha for customer
sexual harassment was .97.
 H. Zhu et al.

Results

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)

CFA was performed on the five key measurements to evaluate the validity. The results
shown in Table 1 indicate that this five-factor model yielded an acceptable fit (χ2 (972)
= 1787.93, TLI = .91, CFI = .92, RMSEA = .06). In addition, alternative models were
analyzed and none of them fit the data better. Thus, we demonstrated the discriminate
validity of the focal scales in this research. In addition, the average variance extracted
(AVE) for customer incivility was .71, for hostile attribution bias was .41, for work-to-
family conflict was .67, for family undermining was .66, and for customer sexual
harassment was .74. The AVE values for all variables except hostile attribution bias
were above .50. These results provided support for the convergent validity of the key
constructs in this study.

Descriptive statistics

As presented in Table 2, customer incivility significantly correlated to work-to-family

conflict (r = .24, p < .01) and family undermining (r = .34, p < .01). In addition, work-
to-family conflict significantly correlated to undermining toward family (r = .26, p <
.01). Hence, these results provided preliminary support for the hypotheses.

Table 1 Results of confirmatory factor analysis for the variables studied

Models χ2 df TLI CFI RMSEA

The baseline model (five-factor model) 1787.93 972 .91 .92 .06
Four-factor model 1: 1903.58 976 .90 .91 .06
Customer incivility and work-to-family conflict were combined
into one factor
Four-factor model 2: 2543.46 976 .84 .84 .08
Customer incivility and customer sexual harassment were combined
into one factor
Four-factor model 3: 1896.60 976 .90 .91 .06
Work-to-family conflict and family undermining were combined
into one factor
Four-factor model 4: 2178.68 976 .87 .88 .07
Customer incivility and hostile attribution bias were combined into
one factor
Three-factor model: 2229.77 979 .87 .88 .07
Customer incivility, work-family conflict, and family undermining
were combined into one factor
Two-factor model: 3045.41 981 .78 .80 .09
Customer incivility, customer sexual harassment, hostile attribution
bias, and work-family conflict were combined into one factor
One-factor model: 3345.15 982 .75 .77 .10
All variables were combined into one factor

N = 264. Customer incivility was simplified into seven items

Table 2 Means, standard deviations, and correlations of all variables

Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5

1.Gender 1.45 .50 1

2.Age 31.54 10.25 .02 1
3.Education 1.24 .52 .00 −.07 1
4.Tenure 1.87 1.72 −.08 .22** .08 1
5.No. of children aged 18 or younger living with them .87 .90 .05 .33** −.06 .10 1
6. Hotel .33 .47 .10 .04 .17** −.26** .02
7.Customer sexual harassment 1.66 .86 −.36** .04 −.09 .04 −.07
8.Customer incivility 2.19 .80 −.17** .08 −.16* .04 −.07
9.Hostile attribution bias 2.92 .66 −.15* −.01 −.06 .13* −.11
10.Work-to-family conflict 2.90 .65 .04 .00 .01 .14* −.07
11.Family undermining 2.02 .88 −.05 .00 −.09 .13* −.11
Variables 6 7 8 9 10 11
6. Hotel 1
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

7.Customer sexual harassment −.16** (.97)

8.Customer incivility −.05 .37** (.94)
9.Hostile attribution bias −.12 .13* .21** (.80)
10.Work-to-family conflict −.08 .10 .24** .20** (.86)
11.Family undermining .00 .29** .34** .29** .26** (.85)

N = 264; ** p < .01(two-tailed), * p<.05(two-tailed)

Bracketed values on the diagonal are the internal reliability coefficients
Gender: “1” - male; “2” – female; Education: “1” – high school degree or below; “2” – associate degree; “3” – bachelor degree; “4” – postgraduate degree or above
 H. Zhu et al.

Test of hypotheses

To test the hypotheses, we performed hierarchical multiple regression analyses. As

shown in Table 3, customer incivility linked with work-to-family conflict positively (β
= .24, p < .01, Model 2), supporting Hypothesis 1. Work-to-family conflict further
linked with undermining toward family positively (β = .21, p < .01, Model 7),
supporting Hypothesis 2.
We also found that customer incivility linked positively with undermining toward
family (β = .25, p < .01, Model 6), and that work-to-family conflict still significantly
predicted undermining toward family (β = .16, p < .01, Model 8), while the relation
between customer incivility and family undermining became less significant (β = .21, p
< .01, Model 8). We further examined the significance of this mediating effect using the
PRODCLIN program that tests the significance of, and confidence interval for, the
indirect effect based on the distribution of the product method (MacKinnon, Fritz,
Williams, & Lockwood, 2007). Results based on the PRODCLIN program
(MacKinnon et al., 2007) further supported the significance of the mediating effect,
with 99.5% confidence interval of [.01, .10]. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was partially
supported.
In support of Hypothesis 4, our results indicated that the interaction of
customer incivility and hostile attribution bias significantly predicted work-to-
family conflict (β = .18, p < .01, Model 4). The interaction accounted for 3%
of the variance in work-to-family conflict (F = 4.12, p < .01, Model 4).
Moreover, we plotted the interaction in Fig. 2 (Aiken & West, 1991). We can
see from Fig. 2 that the impact of customer incivility on work-to-family conflict
was strengthened for individuals high in hostile attribution bias (β = .23, p <
.01) as opposed to low (β = −.01, n.s.).
To test Hypothesis 5, we conducted moderated path analysis (Edwards & Lambert,
2007). We first ran constrained nonlinear regressions (CNLR) to estimate coefficients
from 1000 bootstrap samples. The confidence intervals were then derived from the
percentile function proposed by Edwards and Lambert (2007). Table 4 indicated that
the mediating effect between customer incivility and family undermining was aug-
mented with high hostile attribution bias (β = .05, p < .05) rather than with low (β =
.00, n.s.). In addition, the difference in the indirect effect was significant (β=.05, p <
.05). Hence, Hypothesis 5 received support. In particular, the moderated path analysis
further supported the hypothesis that for those with high hostile attribution bias, the
influence of customer incivility on work-to-family conflict was strengthened (β = .28, p
< .01); while for those low in this trait, the effect was nonsignificant (β = −.02, n.s.).

Discussion

Drawing on COR theory, our study investigated how and when customer incivility
affects employees’ family undermining. With the data collected from a three-phase
survey study, we found that customer incivility affected employees’ work-to-family
conflicts, which in turn further instigated their family undermining behaviors. More-
over, we also found that employees’ hostile attribution bias aggravated this mediating
effect.
Table 3 Results of hypothesis testing

Work-to-family conflict Family undermining

M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8

Control variables
Gender .11 .12 .13* .13* .07 .08 .04 .06
Age −.02 −.04 −.03 −.04 −.03 −.05 −.02 −.04
Education .01 .04 .05 .04 −.10 −.07 −.10 −.07
Tenure .15** .14* .13 .13* .18** .17** .15* .15*
No. of children aged 18 or younger living with them −.07 −.05 −.03 −.03 −.11 −.09 −.09 −.08
Hotel −.03 −.04 −.03 −.02 .11 .10 .11 .10
Customer sexual harassment .13 .05 .05 .02 .31** .22** .28** .21**
Independent variables
Customer incivility .24** .21** .16* .25** .21**
Mediator
Work-to-family conflict .21** .16**
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

Moderator
Hostile attribution bias .14** .17**
Interaction
Customer incivility × hostile attribution bias .18**
R2 .05 .09 .11 .14 .13 .18 .17 .21
ΔR2 .05 .05 .02 .03 .13 .05 .04 .02
F 1.77 3.27** 3.55** 4.12** 5.43** 7.12** 6.55** 7.36**
ΔF 1.77 13.21** 5.32* 8.33** 5.43** 16.67** 12.71** 7.78**

N = 264; ** p < .01 (two-tailed), * p < .05 (two-tailed)

 H. Zhu et al.

3.3
High hostile attribution bias
( β = .23, p < .01)
3.2

Work-to-family conflict
3.1

2.9

Low hostile attribution bias

2.8 ( β = -.01, n.s.)

2.7
low Customer incivility high

Fig. 2 Interactive effect of customer incivility and hostile attribution bias on work-to-family conflict

Theoretical implications

This study makes several theoretical contributions. First, it contributes to customer

incivility literature by examining its negative effects on employees’ family life. Al-
though the issue of customer incivility has drawn growing attention from researchers in
the field, recent studies on the consequences of customer incivility have been primarily
restricted to employees’ well-being and work-related outcomes (Hur et al., 2015; Torres
et al., 2017; Walker et al., 2017). This study departs from the extant research by
exploring the family outcomes of customer incivility by demonstrating that the detri-
mental impact of customer incivility can spill over to the family lives of employees. To
the best of our knowledge, we are among the first to link customer incivility with the

Table 4 Results of the moderated path analysis

Hostile attribution bias Customer incivility (X)➔ Work-to-family conflict (M)➔Family undermining
(Y)

Stage Effect

First Second Direct effects Indirect Effects Total effects

PMX PYM (PYX) (PYM PMX) (PYX+ PYM PM1X)

Low hostile attribution bias −.02 .18* .21 .00 .21

[−.143, .124] [.050, .320] [−.006, .423] [−.029, .026] [−.008, .421]
High hostile attribution bias .28** .18* .21* .05* .26*
[.162, .385] [.050, .320] [.008, .403] [.012, .098] [.064, .447]
Differences .29** .00 .00 .05* .05
[.119, .464] [.000, .000] [−.266, .278] [.011, .111] [−.214, .347]

N = 264; ** p < .01(two-tailed), * p < .05(two-tailed)

PMX: path from customer incivility to work-to-family conflict; PYM: path from work-to-family conflict to
family undermining; PYX: path from customer incivility to family undermining
Tests of differences for the indirect and total effect were based on bias-corrected confidence intervals derived
from bootstrap estimates
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

family domain of employees. This is meaningful because family is extremely substan-

tial for most employees, and family life significantly influences work-related outcomes
(Xin, Chen, Kwan, Chiu, & Yim, 2018; Yi, Kwan, Hu, & Chen, 2017). In addition, we
also contribute by introducing the impact of other stakeholders from outside the
workplace (i.e., customers) to work-family interference literature, an area of study that
has been largely overlooked in extant research.
Second, this research also enhances customer incivility literature by examin-
ing a new mediator through which it can exert effects on employees’ family
undermining. In the current literature, research findings about the mediating
mechanisms linking customer incivility and its consequences are still insuffi-
cient and mainly restricted to employees’ emotional states and psychological
well-being, including emotional exhaustion and emotional labor (e.g., Henkel
et al., 2017; van Jaarsveld, Walker, & Skarlicki, 2010). Our research extends
the literature by theorizing work-to-family conflict as a mediator, thus providing
a new direction for customer incivility research while improving our under-
standing of how customer incivility is linked with employees’ family
undermining. Additionally, we also enhance the literature on work-family con-
flicts by identifying a new workplace stressor as its important antecedent.
Despite the abundance of work-to-family conflict research, scholars have paid
little attention to its stressful sources outside the organization. Given the
characteristics of the service industry (e.g., frequent interaction with customers),
it is pivotal to focus on stressors of work-to-family conflict that are induced by
customers.
Third, the identification of hostile attribution bias as a moderator also advances the
literature on customer incivility. The research findings indicate that although customer
incivility is generally harmful, it is especially destructive to employees characterized by
high hostile attribution bias. The extant literature has identified a series of boundary
conditions under which the impact of customer incivility is augmented or alleviated,
including co-worker incivility, transformational leadership, and organizational support
(Arnold, Connellly, Walsh, & Martin Ginis, 2015; Cho et al., 2016; Han et al., 2016;
Sliter et al., 2010). However, research on how employees’ individual characteristics
alter the effects of customer incivility has remained one of the uninvestigated gaps in
the research (Cho et al., 2016). By examining hostile attribution bias as a moderator,
our study helps improve the understanding of the boundary conditions under which
customer incivility exerts more or fewer effects on employees, and it also responds to
scholars’ appeals for further research to examine how individual traits might affect
responses to customer incivility (Sliter et al., 2012).
Fourth, this study adds to the literature of customer incivility by providing
empirical evidence from China. As the culture value in China is characterized
by a high level of power distance, workplace aggression that results from
power imbalance is pervasive in China and has been the subject of considerable
research (Lam & Xu, 2019; Liu, Kwan, & Zhang, in press; Zhang & Liu,
2018). However, among the studies that have examined workplace aggression,
the issue of customer incivility has received surprisingly little attention in
China. Therefore, our study goes beyond the current literature and uses Chinese
samples to examine the link between customer incivility and employees’ family
lives for the first time.
 H. Zhu et al.

Managerial implications

The findings of our study indicate that customer incivility can be devastating for
employees. When employees suffer from customer incivility, work-to-family conflict
is triggered and can lead to family undermining behaviors. Unfortunately, most orga-
nizations still pay little attention to the growing phenomenon of customer incivility.
Among service organizations, customers are hailed as a lifeline for the organizations
because their satisfaction directly determines the organizational financial performance
(Anderson & Fornell, 2000; Anderson, Fornell, & Mazvancheryl, 2004; Reichheld &
Jr, 1990; Schneider & Bowen, 1993). Policies and principles such as “the customer is
king” and “the customer is always right” are widely adopted in the service industry,
thereby augmenting the prevalence of customer incivility based on the perceived power
imbalance. Given the detrimental effects of customer incivility, it is important for
service organizations to take this issue seriously and correct their attitudes toward
customer incivility. Organizations should provide training programs for managers and
employees to inform them about the features of customer incivility and provide them
with various coping strategies to help them circumvent the escalation of these situa-
tions. In this way, managers are able to identify the issue and take the severity and
impact of customer incivility into consideration.
Second, organizations must adopt effective solutions to reduce the incidence of
customer incivility. On one hand, organizations should implement a zero tolerance
policy for customer incivility” policy and help customers learn about it. Organizations
can install signs or posters to highlight the importance of mutual respect during all
social interaction between customers and employees. Moreover, employees should be
authorized to deal with uncivil customers directly. For instance, some firms track and
record conversations with rude customers, and they permit telephone operators to
terminate phone calls after warning the customer about their inappropriate behavior.
Similarly, when encountering customer incivility, employees should be allowed to
suspend service rather than be forced to remain in an ominous situation. On the other
hand, organizations should endeavor to help employees so they are better prepared to
deal with uncivil customers (Hur et al., 2015). For example, organizations can provide
training programs for employees to help them become sufficiently knowledgeable
about customer needs and appropriate methods to interact with upset customers
(Sliter et al., 2010). In addition, as empowerment alleviates the power imbalance
between employees and customers (e.g., Ben-Zur & Yagil, 2005), it should be effective
for organizations to empower employees to diminish uncivil behavior from customers.
Third, as our research suggests, customer incivility depletes resources in employees’
family lives. According to COR theory, when individuals experience resource depletion
from one source, it is important that they have access to resource replenishment from
others (Hobfoll, 1989; Sliter et al., 2012). Organizations would be wise to implement
resource replenishment strategies to alleviate the pain induced from customer incivility
so that the spillover effects on employees’ family lives can be diminished. Organiza-
tions should establish a supportive environment that encourages employees to report
their customer incivility experiences and provide psychological counseling for those in
need. Moreover, organizations should offer regular breaks for employees to alleviate
the accumulation of negative effects derived from customer incivility that can poten-
tially augment the aforementioned spillover (Sliter et al., 2012).
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

Finally, as our research suggests that people high in hostile attribution bias are
particularly vulnerable to customer incivility, organizations should focus more on these
employees. First, organizations are able to evaluate employees’ traits during the
recruitment and selection processes. When possible, they should hire employees with
low hostile attribution bias because such employees might be less sensitive to customer
incivility and better prepared to navigate these situations. In addition, managers must
also provide more support for current employees who are characterized by high levels
of hostile attribution bias to help buffer their resource loss caused by customer
incivility. Organizations might also consider transferring these at-risk employees to
positions where they will face less interaction with customers.

Limitations and future directions

First, the survey included in this study was conducted only in China where
Confucianism is predominant (Levenson, 1968). With the profound influence of
Confucian values, individuals tend to restrain their emotions and value social
harmony (Klineberg, 1938; Li, 2006). As a result, Chinese employees might
withhold their anger when they encounter customer incivility. With higher
levels of emotional suppression, their resources are more severely depleted,
and the incidence of work-to-family conflict escalates, thereby further inducing
undermining behaviors toward family members. Similarly, previous research has
found that employees in China usually respond to abusive customers indirectly,
while employees in North America have direct and active reactions to such
customers (Shao & Skarlicki, 2013). Given these cultural differences, the
current research findings might be limited in Chinese contexts. Future research
should replicate the current study in other cultures.
Second, we are unable to rule out the possibility of reverse causal relationships using
time-lagged data even though it was contended to be more rigorous than a cross-
sectional design (Law, Wong, Yan, & Huang, 2016). Future studies should follow Law
and colleagues (Law et al., 2016) by using a cross-lagged design to further examine the
causal relationships among our key variables. Also, our study is susceptible to common
method bias since the data were all provided by the same source (Podsakoff et al.,
2003). However, we applied a three-phase research design to collect data that helped
decrease the likelihood of common method variance. Additionally, our factor analysis
suggests that the level of common method variance was acceptable in this study and did
not threaten the validity of our research findings. To further decrease common method
bias, future research can collect data from more than one source. For instance, family
undermining could be rated by employees’ family members. In addition, the AVE value
for hostile attribution bias in our study was .41, below the standard of .50. The
convergent validity of this measure is thus not validated. Future research is needed to
incorporate other measurements to confirm the validity of hostile attribution bias and
the credibility of our model.
Third, although we included customer sexual harassment to exclude its potential
effects on employees’ family lives, we did not consider other types of customer
mistreatment, such as customer ostracism and customer abuse, because of the limited
questionnaire length. We are unsure whether the impact of customer incivility would
still be unique and significant if other types of customer mistreatment were considered.
 H. Zhu et al.

Additional research is needed to measure customer incivility alongside other types of

customer mistreatment to further confirm the independent and incremental effects of
customer incivility.
Research on customer incivility has only recently developed and is still insufficient,
especially in the context of service (e.g., Wilson & Holmvall, 2013; Han et al., 2016).
To advance the research on this topic, future studies can take several directions. First,
we suggest that researchers pay special attention to the impact of customer incivility on
employees’ job-related performance. Current research on the job-related outcomes of
customer incivility is mainly restricted to employees’ in-role performance and negative
work behaviors such as withdrawal (Cho et al., 2016; Sliter et al., 2012). As customer
needs are now more diversified and unexpected, emphasizing only in-role service
performance is inadequate to meet the requirements of customers (Lengnick-Hall,
1996; Raub & Liao, 2012). Therefore, researchers need to investigate whether, how,
and when customer incivility affects employees’ various forms of extra-role service
performance such as proactive customer service performance and customer-oriented
organizational citizenship behavior. Moreover, future research can also explore the
effects of customer incivility on other job-related attitudes in addition to intentions to
leave and job satisfaction (Han et al., 2016; Wilson & Holmvall, 2013), including
organizational commitment and career satisfaction.
Second, in addition to family undermining, future research can investigate other
family outcomes of customer incivility. As we suggested earlier, customer incivility is a
daily social hassle that causes serious spillover effects on the employee’s family life.
However, current research linking customer incivility with the family lives of em-
ployees is still in its initial stages, and we are among the first to test it empirically. Thus,
we encourage future researchers to focus on this issue and consider other family-related
consequences, such as marriage satisfaction, work-family balance, and work-family
enrichment.
Third, future research can explore other mediating mechanisms underlying the
relationship between customer incivility and employees’ family-related outcomes.
Although COR theory has been demonstrated as an appropriate theoretical lens to
understand how customer incivility affects employees’ families, other theoretical
frameworks may also work because work-to-family conflicts only partially mediated
between customer incivility and family undermining. We therefore suggest more
studies to examine other mediating mechanisms. For example, Sonnentag (2012) has
demonstrated that high levels of job stressors suppress the state of psychological
detachment that could further result in a series of family-related consequences. There-
fore, future research can investigate whether psychological detachment serves as a
potential underlying mechanism between customer incivility and employees’ family
outcomes.

Conclusion

Drawing on COR theory, this study investigated a resource depletion model of cus-
tomer incivility to explore whether, how, and when customer incivility influences
employees’ family undermining. The research findings suggest that customer incivility
induces employees’ work-to-family conflicts and that this in turn provokes their
The impact of customer incivility on employees’ family undermining:...

undermining behaviors by targeting family members. Moreover, hostile attribution bias

exacerbates the detrimental impact of customer incivility. When employees are char-
acterized by high hostile attribution bias, the effects of customer incivility are ampli-
fied. We hope this study encourages future research to focus on the vital issue of
customer incivility and advances the understanding of this issue.

Funding information We thank the support provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. 71702198, 71902111), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant
No. 1609018).

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Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Hong Zhu (PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University) is an associate professor of management at the Sun Yat-Sen
University. Her research interests include leadership, HRM, and employee customer-oriented behaviors. Her
work has been published in such journals as Asia Pacific Journal of Management, International Journal of
Hospitality Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Business Ethics,
and Journal of World Business.

Yijing Lyu (PhD, Fudan University) is an assistant professor of management at the Xiamen University. Her
research interests include leadership, HRM, and proactive behavior. Her work has been published in such
journals as Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Human Resource Management, International Journal of Contem-
porary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Business

Ethics, and Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Yijiao Ye (PhD candidate, Xiamen University) is a PhD candidate of management at the Xiamen University.
Her research interests include leadership and HRM. Her work has been published in such journals as
International Journal of Hospitality Management and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management.