Journal of Food Protection 87 (2024) 100200

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Journal of Food Protection

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfp

Research Paper

Does Foodservice Employees’ Burnout Influence Their In-role and Extra-role

Food Safety Behaviors? A Structural Modeling Approach
Jihee Choi ⇑
Queens College, The City University of New York (CUNY), Flushing, NY 11367, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Over the past decade, a number of previous studies have found a gap between employees’ food safety knowl-
Employee burnout edge and their food safety behavior. Thus, it is valuable to examine motivators (or demotivators) of employees’
Extra‐role food safety behaviors food safety behavior from a psychological perspective. The objective of this study is to investigate the relation-
Foodservice industry ships among employees’ burnout, job commitment, and food safety behaviors (in‐role and extra‐role). A total of
In‐role food safety behaviors
267 nonmanagerial restaurant employees participated in this study. The data were analyzed using structural
Job commitment
Structural equation modeling (SEM)
equation modeling (SEM). Findings reveal that colleague‐related burnout and work‐related burnout negatively
affect employee job commitment. In addition, employee job commitment is a major predictor of in‐role and
extra‐role food safety behaviors. The findings shed light on the effect of different types of burnout on food
safety behaviors, which in turn have significant implications for managers in the foodservice industry.

Foodborne illness is one of the leading causes of mortality globally.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015), one in ten
people becomes sick as a result of consuming unsafe food; 600 million
cases of foodborne illness and 420,000 related deaths were reported
every year. Surprisingly, although serving safe meals to customers is
the main responsibility of foodservice employees, approximately
97% of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States are associated
with food handling errors, especially unhygienic food handling in the
foodservice industry (Baser et al., 2017; Tauxe, 2019). Thus, promot-
ing safe food handling practices will help to prevent foodborne illness.
Over the past decade, previous studies (Green et al., 2007; Panchal
et al., 2014) have found a disconnect between employees’ knowledge
and their food safety behavior, noting that imparting knowledge may
not be sufficient to elicit the desired adherence to food safety protocols
and promote appropriate food safety behaviors among restaurant staff.
Thus, researchers (Guchait et al., 2016; Rossi et al., 2017) have
recently become interested in a more thorough investigation of moti-
vational (or demotivational) factors to fully understand the reason
for such gaps in knowledge and behavior in the context of food safety
(de Freitas et al., 2019). Employees’ food safety behavior is positively
correlated with how they perceive the organizational climate
(Sharman et al., 2020). Therefore, it is valuable to investigate motiva-
tors (or demotivators) of employees’ food safety behavior from a psy-
chological perspective.
One of the factors demotivating food safety‐related behaviors of
foodservice employees is burnout. Job burnout refers to mental and
physical exhaustion resulting from ongoing stress that can lead to a
lack of motivation when dealing with customers, colleagues, and the
requirements of one’s job (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Unanue et al.,
2017). The foodservice industry has a notoriously demanding work
environment, which often brings about employee exhaustion (Lu &
Gursoy, 2016); as a result, high levels of burnout are prevalent among
foodservice workers. Unfortunately, emotional exhaustion plays a neg-
ative role in employees’ health and job commitment, which can ulti-
mately lead to a decline in service quality and productivity at an
organizational level (Silva et al., 2021; Sönmez et al., 2017). More
specifically, in the context of food safety, employees suffering from
burnout may not put forth their best efforts in terms of proper work‐
related behaviors, even following food safety hygiene standards. Such
employees are more likely to make food safety‐related errors and cause
or experience workplace accidents, thereby putting their customers at
risk (e.g., foodborne illness outbreak) (Kristensen et al., 2005; Maslach
& Jackson, 1981).
Reasons for employee burnout in the foodservice context include
high workload and intense routines; they need to serve large quanti-
ties, and a greater variety, of food, quickly and accurately, to cus-
tomers who may be demanding or even rude (Silva et al., 2021). In
addition to the demanding work environment, insufficient job
resources, lack of guidance from a supervisor, and conflict with

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Jihee.choi@qc.cuny.edu

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfp.2023.100200
Received 23 September 2023; Accepted 24 November 2023
Available online 28 November 2023
0362-028X/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of International Association for Food Protection.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
J. Choi
colleagues or supervisors were found to be major factors causing
employee burnout (Salpigktidis et al., 2016). Radic et al. (2020) have
proposed a job demands‐resources model, asserting that employee
burnout occurs when job demands (resulting from job pressure) and
increased workload are excessive, and the job‐related resources pro-
vided in the workplace are not sufficient for employees to perform
their given tasks. On the other hand, when employees feel that they
are supported by their colleagues and supervisor, they are less likely
to feel mentally and physically drained in their workplace, which
can motivate them to provide optimal quality service to their cus-
tomers and ultimately allows an establishment to maintain a high rep-
utation (Silva et al., 2021).
In this study, we consider employee burnout as one of the factors
demotivating employee food safety behaviors. Based on previous liter-
ature (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Unanue et al., 2017), this study
focuses on three different sources of burnout: (1) personal, related to
personal and family problems; (2) colleagues, related to conflict with
coworkers; and (3) work itself, related to characteristics of the employ-
ee’s assigned tasks. While employee burnout in general has been exten-
sively researched (Nascimento et al., 2022), no previous study has
specifically distinguished between the different types of foodservice
employee burnout in a food safety setting.
An employee’s commitment to their organization has a positive link
with enhanced food safety behaviors (Al Bayari et al., 2023; Taha
et al., 2020). Commitment signifies that employees feel their work is
meaningful to them, and that they respect their job and their supervi-
sor (Fu & Deshpande, 2014; Meyer et al., 2002). More specifically,
employees who are highly committed to their organization or job
are more likely not only to work hard to fulfill expected goals but also
show willingness to go beyond their job requirements (e.g., helping
coworkers with a food safety‐related problem) (Bani‐Melhem, 2020;
Dhar, 2015). The significant role of employee commitment in food
safety behaviors has been proven in previous studies, which found that
employees who are highly engaged in the organization are less likely
to commit food safety violations (Nascimento et al., 2022; Taha
et al., 2020). Given that employee commitment was found to be a
strong antecedent to employees’ food safety behaviors, management
support – which is a key element of employee commitment – is vital.
Inspired by previous research (Al Bayari et al., 2023; Shen et al.,
2014; Tu et al., 2021), this study’s focus on employee food safety
behavior is twofold: first, in‐role food safety behaviors such as compli-
ance with food safety‐related standards within the employee’s formal
job tasks (i.e., the extent to which food safety‐related behavioral pro-
tocols or guidelines are followed), and second, extra‐role food safety
behaviors related to activities beyond formal job requirements which
are beneficial for coworkers and the organization, such as voluntary
participation in food safety‐related error management (i.e., the extent
to which employees voluntarily watch for and correct food safety‐
related errors by others within the organization).
This study aims to examine the relationship between employee
burnout and employee food safety behaviors by measuring employee
commitment to the organization. The effects of foodservice employee
burnout in the food safety setting are not well understood. Therefore,
this study addresses the following two questions: (1) Do different types
of employee burnout have different influences on employee job com-
mitment? (2) What are the positive food safety behavioral conse-
quences in terms of compliance and participation? In order to
answer these research questions, this study empirically tests the rela-
tionships between different types of employee burnouts (personal,
colleague‐related, work‐related), employee job commitment, and
employee food safety behaviors (both in‐role and extra‐role). The find-
ings of this study will shed light on the influence of different types of
burnout on food safety behaviors, which in turn will have important
implication and guidance for managers in the foodservice industry.
Based on previous literature, the following hypotheses are pro-
posed (Fig. 1).
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Journal of Food Protection 87 (2024) 100200
H1. Employee personal burnout is negatively associated with
employee job commitment.
H2. Employee colleague‐related burnout is negatively associated
with employee job commitment.
H3. Employee work‐related burnout is negatively associated with
employee job commitment.
H4. Employee job commitment is positively associated with
employees’ food safety behaviors (in‐role behavior).
H5. Employee job commitment is positively associated with
employees’ food safety behaviors (extra‐role behavior).
Materials and Methods
Sample and data collection Prior to data collection, the univer-
sity’s Human Subjects Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved all
study‐related materials, including the survey questionnaire and
research protocol. The sample was limited to nonmanagerial restau-
rant employees such as workers whose primary task was preparing
or cooking foods in the kitchen, in the United States. At the beginning
of the questionnaire, a screening question was asked as follows: “Are
you currently employed, or have you been employed within the last
three years for at least 6 months as a nonmanagerial staff member,
specifically in roles such as a cook or cook assistant, handling food
in the back‐of‐house areas of a restaurant in the United States (exclud-
ing positions of managerial capacity, such as manager)?” Only respon-
dents who met the required criteria were eligible to answer the
remaining survey questions. Ineligible participants were asked to stop
and exit the questionnaire. Given the purpose of this study, we
excluded employees who have authority over the operation, such as
managers. Employees who had not worked for at least six months or
had worked more than 3 years ago (i.e., were not employed as such
now) in the restaurant industry were excluded to prevent any recall
bias among respondents and reduce the risk of participants misremem-
bering; this was done to improve the quality of data in terms of accu-
racy and validity.
The research model is composed of six constructs: level of personal,
colleague, and work burnout, commitment to the organization, and
food safety behaviors including in‐role and extra‐role. Each construct
was measured by several items derived from literature. For example,
the different types of burnout – personal, colleague‐related, work‐
related – were evaluated with six items (e.g., I am often physically
exhausted), 6 (e.g., I find it hard to work with colleagues), and seven
items (e.g., I feel burnt out because of my work) respectively, derived
from Silva et al. (2021). Employees’ affective organizational commit-
ment was assessed using six items adopted from Taha et al. (2020).
To measure employees’ food safety behaviors, both in‐role and extra‐
role, three and five items respectively were adopted from previous
studies (Guchait et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2013). All measurements were
estimated using a seven‐point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree to
7 = Strongly agree). Lastly, respondents’ demographic information
was collected including gender, age, income, and marital status. The
online questionnaire was developed using Qualtrics and data were col-
lected over the course of six months from January to June of 2023
through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (M‐turk), which is widely used
in hospitality research (Buhrmester et al., 2011). M‐turk is known as
an effective sampling tool in terms of demographic and geographical
diversity compared to other standard internet samples, which may
increase our findings’ generalizability. Additionally, previous studies
in the field of hospitality human resource management have employed
M‐Turk, which proves it is a reliable method (Kim et al., 2017;
Orlowski et al., 2016). Upon successful completion of the survey,
$0.50 was deposited into each participant’s M‐turk account as an
incentive for participation.
Data analysis. All data analyses were performed using SPSS 22.0
and AMOS 22.0. To test the proposed model, including multiple simul-
taneous linear regressions, structural equation modeling (SEM) was
J. Choi
Figure 1. Conceptual model and hypotheses.
used (Nachtigall et al., 2003). Following Anderson and Gerbing’s
(1988) two‐step approach, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was
used to validate the measurements of proposed constructs in the
model, and SEM was used to evaluate the validity of the structural
model and test the hypotheses.
Results
Descriptive statistics. After data screening to remove surveys with
missing values and invalid answers in the screening question, the final
dataset was composed of 267 participants. Of the respondents, 74.3
percent were male, and 25.7 percent were female. The majority of
respondents were Caucasian (71.4 percent). More than half of respon-
dents (58%) were between 18 and 33 years old (72.8 percent). In
terms of work experience, more than half of respondents (58.7) had
five years or less work experience in the foodservice industry.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Confirmatory factor analysis
(CFA) was used to test the validity and reliability of the measurement
model (Anderson & Gerbing, 1998; Hair et al., 1998). The results indi-
cated an acceptable model fit. The χ2 estimate was 677.411, p
value = 0.000, χ2/df = 1.411. The results for other fit indices also
indicated an adequate model fit (CFI = 0.979, IFI = 0.980,
TLI = 0.977, RMSEA = 0.04), with IFI, TLI, and CFI values between
0 and 1 (Byrne, 1998) and the RMSEA value between 0.04 and 0.08
(Turner & Reisinger, 2001).
As shown in Table 1, internal consistency of the scale was tested
through the composite reliability (CR) of each intended construct.
All composite reliability values exceeded the minimum threshold of
0.70, indicating sufficient internal consistency (Hair et al., 1998).
The values for Cronbach’s alpha for measuring the internal consistency
of item scales were higher than 0.70 as shown (Nunnally & Bernstein,
1994). The convergent and discriminant validity of the measurement
scales are given in Table 2 (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). Convergent
validity was confirmed by acceptable factor loadings, and all factor
loadings were statistically significant at the level of 0.001 ranging
from 0.778 to 0.962 (Table 1). In addition, Average Variance Extracted
(AVE) values for all constructs were higher than 0.50, which is the
standard value (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988; Fornell & Larcker, 1981). In addi-
tion, for discriminant validity of the scale, all of the squared correla-
tion values between pairs of concepts were lower than the AVE for
each construct, thus all discriminant validities were adequately sup-
ported by CFA (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) (Table 2).
Structural model (SEM). Structural equation model (SEM) was
used to estimate the overall goodness of fit using AMOS. The SEM
results showed an acceptable model fit to the data. Chi‐square was
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Journal of Food Protection 87 (2024) 100200
727.819 with 487 degree of freedom (p < 0.001), with
CFI = 0.975, IFI = 0.975, TLI = 0.973, and RMSEA = 0.04. TLI,
IFI, and CFI values ranged from 0 to 1 with a number close to 1.00,
indicating acceptable fit (Byrne, 1998). The chi‐square/df ratio was
1.494, below the standard threshold of 3.0 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Fig-
ure 2 shows the standardized path coefficients and their statistical sig-
nificance. Results of SEM analysis show that four out of five
hypotheses were supported (Table 3). As shown in Figure 2, all except
H1 (β = 0.119, p > 0.05) were supported, and the support for H2
(β = −0.316, p < 0.001) indicated a negative relationship between
colleague‐related burnout and employee commitment. The support
for H3 (β = −0.240, p < 0.05) indicated a negative relationship
between work‐related burnout and employee commitment. The sup-
port for H4 (β = 0.810, p < 0.001) indicated a positive relationship
between employee commitment and their food safety behavior (in‐
role). The support for H5 (β = 0.559, p =< 0.001) indicated a posi-
tive relationship between employee commitment and food safety
behavior (extra‐role).
Discussions and Conclusions
Discussion. The present study examined the relationships between
foodservice employee burnout, job commitment, and food safety
behaviors. Specifically, we explored how different sources of burnout
(personal, colleague‐related, and work‐related) affect employees’ food
safety‐related behaviors, both in‐role (e.g., whether employees are
willing to follow food safety protocols or guidelines) and extra‐role
(e.g., whether employees are willing to participate in food safety‐
related error management or error reporting) by measuring employee
commitment toward their job. This study found that colleague‐related
and work‐related burnout have a negative effect on employee commit-
ment toward their job and that employee commitment affects
employee food safety behaviors.
Given the exacerbating effects of increased employee burnout or
job stress on food safety adherence in the dynamic environments
wherein such employees work, it is critical to gain a fuller understand-
ing of how these factors interact. We observed a significant association
between employee burnout and employee job performance, which is
consistent with results reported by previous studies (Baron & Kenny,
1986; De Boeck et al., 2017; Radic et al., 2020; Tu et al., 2021). Our
results regarding a negative association between burnout and job per-
formance also confirm Radic’s job demands‐job resources model
(Radic et al., 2020), emphasizing that burnout is an indicator that
employees have insufficient resources to adequately perform their
work roles. Differing from previous studies that simply focused on
J. Choi Journal of Food Protection 87 (2024) 100200

Table 1
CFA results: items and loadings

Construct Mean Standard Standardized Composite

deviation factor loadings reliabilities

Personal burnout 0.964

I often feel tired. 4.221 1.800 0.891
I am often physically exhausted. 4.247 1.865 0.923
I am often emotionally exhausted. 4.333 1.926 0.932
I often think I can’t take it anymore. 4.273 1.908 0.903
I often feel worn out. 4.262 1.944 0.900
I often feel weak and susceptible to illness. 4.172 1.984 0.882
Colleague-related burnout 0.957
I find it hard to work with colleagues. 4.506 1.844 0.862
It drains my energy to work with colleagues. 4.397 1.942 0.884
I find it frustrating to work with colleagues. 4.355 1.934 0.894
I feel that I give more than I get back when I work with colleagues. 4.476 1.989 0.898
I am tired of working with colleagues. 4.247 2.003 0.901
I sometimes wonder how long I will be able to continue working with colleagues. 4.355 1.953 0.890
Work-related burnout 0.963
My work is emotionally exhausting. 4.299 1.789 0.863
I feel burnt out because of my work. 4.370 1.827 0.900
My work frustrates me. 4.258 1.836 0.859
I feel worn out at the end of the working day. 4.344 1.815 0.891
I am exhausted in the morning at the thought of another day at work. 4.299 1.885 0.907
I feel that every working hour is tiring for me. 4.340 1.935 0.907
I have enough energy for family and friends during leisure time. 4.269 1.958 0.898
Commitment 0.950
I really feel as if this organization’s problems are my own. 4.580 1.739 0.853
I think that I could easily become as attached to another organization as I am to this one. 4.625 1.715 0.883
I do feel like ‘part of the family’ at my organization. 4.565 1.714 0.860
I do feel ‘emotionally attached’ to this organization. 4.603 1.736 0.872
This organization has a great deal of personal meaning for me. 4.745 1.699 0.865
I do not feel a ‘strong’ sense of belonging to my organization. 4.704 1.847 0.904
Food safety behaviors (in-role) 0.958
I intend to follow food safety practices during working hours. 0.962
I encourage others to follow food safety practices during working hours. 0.937
I try to set a good example of food safety practices for others to follow. 0.921
Food safety behaviors (extra-role) 0.910
After food safety errors have occurred, I analyze it thoroughly. 4.970 1.463 0.778
After people make food safety-related errors, I ask others for advice on how to continue. 4.913 1.564 0.796
When someone makes food safety-related errors, I share it with others so that they don’t make the same mistake. 4.861 1.494 0.826
For us, errors are very useful for improving the work process. 4.861 1.558 0.853
After making a mistake, I try to analyze what caused it. 4.962 1.569 0.838

Note: All factor loadings were significant at p < 0.001.

Table 2
AVE and correlations matrix

No. of items AVE Personal Colleague Work Commit In-role Extra-role

Personal 6 0.819 0.964a

0.292 b
0.374 −0.055 −0.142 0.033
Colleague 6 0.789 0.085c 0.957 0.765 −0.458 −0.49 −0.103
Work 7 0.791 0.139 0.585 0.963 −0.421 −0.547 −0.122
Commitment 6 0.762 0.003 0.209 0.17 0.950 0.803 0.558
In-role 3 0.883 0.020 0.24 0.29 0.64 0.958 0.499
Extra-role 5 0.669 0.001 0.014 0.010 0.310 0.249 0.910

Notes: aComposite reliability is indicated along the diagonal; bcorrelations are above the diagonal; csquared correlations are below the diagonal.

the effect of employee burnout in general on job commitment and food
safety behaviors (Nascimento et al., 2022), this study confirmed that
different types of employee burnout can differently affect the employ-
ee’s food safety behaviors. For instance, personal burnout was not sig-
nificant in predicting employee job commitment. Because no other
previous studies have made a distinction among different types of
employee burnouts in a food safety context, to the best of our knowl-
edge, this insignificant result regarding the effect of personal burnout
on employee job commitment could not be verified against the work of
others. However, we may assume that personal burnout is less relevant
to a person’s job compared to work‐related and colleague‐related burn-
out. Rather, organizational factors such as the perceived level of man-
agement support would make employees more or less committed to
their job or organization, as suggested by Wilins et al. (2017).
The results of this study indicate that colleague‐related burnout is
negatively associated with employee job commitment. In line with
these findings, previous studies (Hofmann & Stokburger‐Sauer, 2017;
Kang & Jang, 2022) have also asserted that service employees’ emo-
tional exhaustion resulting from human factors in the workplace
(e.g., emotional labor required to deal with colleagues or customers)
negatively impacts employee job commitment. Therefore, foodservice
managers should focus on devising effective strategies to prevent
employee burnout, especially burnout caused by human factors
(Hakanen et al., 2008). Our findings regarding the negative correlation
between work‐related burnout, job commitment, and food safety
behaviors are confirmed by previous research on employee burnout
in the hospitality context, highlighting that employee work burnout
has consistently been found to be closely related to work pressure,

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J. Choi Journal of Food Protection 87 (2024) 100200

Figure 2. Structural equation model.

Table 3 est in understanding the factors affecting employees’ food safety

Standardized parameter estimates for the structural model behaviors in the foodservice industry, several studies (Al‐Shabib
Relationships Standardized t value Hypothesis
et al., 2016; Ehuwa et al., 2021; Hertzman & Barrash, 2007) have
estimate found that food safety knowledge alone does not necessarily lead to
adequate food safety practices. Thus, they emphasized a need to iden-
H1: Personal burnout and job 0.119 1.953 Not
commitment supported
tify other psychological factors that might motivate employees to prac-
H2: Colleague burnout and job −0.316 −3.385 Supported tice proper food safety behaviors (Choi, 2022) Most food safety
commitment research to date has concentrated on organizational factors and cogni-
H3: Work burnout and job commitment −0.240 −2.514 Supported tive factors affecting food safety behaviors; investigation of psycholog-
H4: Job commitment and food safety 0.810 15.830 Supported
ical factors is relatively new in the food safety setting (de Andrade
behaviors (in-role)
H5: Job commitment and food safety 0.559 8.531 Supported et al., 2020). Therefore, the present study extends the scope of food
behaviors (extra-role) safety research and fills a literature gap by investigating the conver-
gence of employee burnout, job commitment, and food safety behav-
iors. Second, while previous studies related to food safety have
which may negatively impact employees’ work outcomes (de Andrade utilized comprehensive scales to measure employee burnout in gen-
et al., 2020). Moreover, according to the job demands‐job resources eral, the current study separately tested different types of employee
model suggested by Radic et al. (2020), work‐related burnout is worse burnout, categorized as personal, colleague‐related, and job‐related.
in more demanding and intense work environments with high work- By doing so, the results provide a more detailed explanation as to
loads and an absence of resources and support (Salpigktidis et al., how different types of burnout affect employee job commitment and
2016). When employees feel that their job is very demanding and that food safety behaviors. In addition, most previous studies considered
they do not have sufficient resources necessary for carrying out that employee burnout as an endogenous variable in their research models.
job, this can trigger feelings of stress and ultimately result in work‐ By examining the potential consequences of employee burnout, our
related burnout, in turn causing lower job commitment and less con- findings provide a useful foundation for researchers wishing to exam-
scientious, or even dysfunctional, behavior (Jung & Kim, 2012). ine the impact of employee burnout on job performance in the foodser-
In regard to the relationship between employee job commitment vice industry. Third, in addition to the previously researched topic of
and food safety behavioral intentions, the findings of this study are food safety behavioral intention as a predictor of future food safety
consistent with those of previous studies (Al Bayari et al., 2023; behaviors, this study adds the element of employees’ extra‐role food
Griffith et al., 2010) which found that employee food safety behavior safety behaviors (e.g., voluntary participation). Lastly, although this
is positively related to employee job commitment. In other words, study was conducted in a restaurant setting in relation to its examina-
employees’ affective organizational commitment was found to be a tion of employees’ food safety behaviors, research into noncommercial
crucial element in enhancing food safety performance and establishing foodservice settings (e.g., schools, hospitals) will also benefit from the
a good food safety culture (Taha et al., 2020). Since job commitment expanded understanding of the relationship between employee burn-
represents the employee’s involvement in their organization and may out and food safety behaviors.
influence the sense of obligation to that organization, employees Practical implications. This study’s findings have several practical
who are highly committed to their company are more likely to actively implications for the foodservice industry. First, given that employee
follow food safety guidelines and provide suggestions for solving food burnout is negatively associated with employee job commitment
safety‐related issues or problems than employees who are not. Our (Hakanen et al., 2008), understanding the role of psychological factors
findings suggest that companies would be wise to exert their fullest in managing food safety is key to mitigating the risk of foodborne ill-
efforts towards reducing the presence of stressors that bring about ness in the foodservice industry. Our findings provide a more concrete
employee burnout, in order to encourage employee commitment and framework for understanding how different types of employee burnout
thus promote adequate food safety behaviors (De Boeck et al., 2017; influence employee food safety behaviors. Thus, the findings of this
Ivancevich et al., 1990) study can be useful in developing customized employee stress inter-
Theoretical implications. The findings of this study have valuable vention strategies tailored for the different types of employee burnout,
academic implications. First, in line with the growing academic inter- to minimize psychosocial risks and ensure employees’ well‐being in

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J. Choi
the workplace. Moreover, by evaluating its employees’ stress levels on
a regular basis, an organization can address problems before they lead
to burnout. Different techniques such as relaxation training or medita-
tion may be beneficial (Pienaar & Willemse, 2008). Second, based on
the findings of this study, and noting that organizational commitment
plays a crucial role in employees’ food safety behaviors, a company
would be well advised to ensure that its employees feel adequately
supported by the company, as this could be key to increased employee
commitment, which will in turn yield better outcomes in terms of
proper food safety behaviors (Wilkins et al., 2017). For example, food-
service managers could offer flexible work schedules, allowing
employees to balance their work and personal lives. They could offer
fair wages, practice salary transparency, and/or provide a comfortable
work environment. All of these contribute to making employees feel
that their work is valued, which promotes a positive mindset and
increases employee commitment (“The company is doing something
good for me; I will do my best for the company”).
Limitations and future studies. There are some limitations in the
current study. First, we employed a cross‐sectional research design.
Longitudinal studies are needed to investigate potential causal effects
over time. Second, we employed a questionnaire for the current study,
which may create an inherent language bias. Future researchers may
consider replicating the study with diverse languages, which would
contribute to increased generalizability of the results as well as adding
cultural diversity. Third, we measured employees’ food safety behav-
ioral intentions as dependent variables; future research might utilize
different methods to measure or observe actual food safety behaviors.
Fourth, the context of this study was the restaurant industry; a compar-
ison of commercial and noncommercial (e.g., schools, hospitals,
assisted living facilities, prisons) would contribute to a broader under-
standing of the landscape. Fifth, while the current study verified
whether respondents were currently, or had been recently, working
in the United States using a screening question and employed an effec-
tive sampling tools in terms of geographical diversity (M‐Turk), we did
not collect a participant’s specific location. It would be interesting to
investigate whether the relationship between employee burnout and
food safety behaviors differs depending on geographic location. Lastly,
desirability biases could be a limitation of any study of food safety
behaviors, since such behaviors are often subject to social norms and
expectations. Employees might perceive certain answers as more
socially acceptable or desirable. Finally, while we relied on quantita-
tive methods (a survey), qualitative methods like interviews or focus
groups could provide deeper insights for future studies.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by a Professional Staff Congress—The
City University of New York (PSC‐CUNY) Start‐Up Funds (#90922‐
05 08).
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