Dr Shi (Tracy) Xu

It is widely understood that nature engagement benefits human wellbeing. Such benefits have been found for real as well as virtual engagements. However, little is known about the role of nature-based videos in social media on wellbeing. With Covid-19 restrictions limiting people's direct engagement with natural environments, this study critically examined people's reactions to nature videos posted on Facebook during the first UK Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Data consisted of comments on videos containing highlights from the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Springwatch 2020 television series, and from a UK television presenter and naturalist's (Chris Packham) livestream videos, posted on Facebook from March to July 2020. Looking at the quantitative profile of a range of videos (i.e., views, likes and shares) and a detailed analysis of the 143,265 comments using thematic analysis, 3 major themes were generated: (1) engaging with nature via social media is emotionally complicated, (2) cognitive and reflective reactions are generated from social media nature engagement, and (3) engagement with nature-based social media as a mechanism for coping with stress during Covid-19. These findings inform understanding of how nature-related social media content and associated commentary have supported wellbeing 2 throughout the ongoing pandemic and their importance as a means of continued support for wellbeing.

Research shows that gardens are important for wellbeing. To examine garden use and wellbeing during the first Covid-19 lockdown, a sample of 850 UK respondents were asked to recall their experiences and use of their home gardens between March and May 2020. Key findings include: • Gardens were used frequently during the lockdown, with around 60% visiting their garden at least once a day. • Gardens were used more frequently than other natural environments during lockdown. • More frequent garden visits were associated with better wellbeing. • But more than 1 in 10 either had no access to a garden, or found it difficult to access one. • Ethnic minorities and those with a low household income were more likely to have no garden access or find access difficult. • Younger respondents were more likely to have difficult or no garden access than older respondents, with those under 47 years of age reporting the greatest difficulties. • The more nature in the garden, the greater the wellbeing of respondents. • Certain aspects of nature were particularly associated with improved wellbeing: natural sounds and smells, and animals, birds and insects. • Respondents did multiple activities in their gardens, with 43% gardening, 27% spending time resting, sitting and lying down, 21% reading, 14% watching and feeding nature, 13% listening to music, radio and podcasts, and 11% enjoying the weather.

Purpose – This paper aims to introduce Latent Growth Curve Modeling (LGCM) as a statistical technique to analyze repeated measures of longitudinal data to researchers in hospitality management. Design/methodology/approach – First, the basics and extensions of LGCM are explained. Second, this paper reviews three existing empirical hospitality research studies that could have benefitted from LGCM but did not use this methodology. Third, this paper provides an overview of two specific illustrative examples of how the current authors have already utilized LGCM for hospitality research. Findings – Based on explaining the basics of LGCM, delineating two examples using LGCM method, and presenting new research avenues that would utilize LGCM to advance theoretical knowledge, this paper shows how LGCM represents a leap forward in the promotion of more rigorous research in hospitality management. Originality/value - This paper is the first in hospitality to call for research based on LGCM and provide hands-on demonstrations and an agenda for this methodology.

Purpose: This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with an understanding of abusive supervision in the context of hospitality. It seeks to conduct a comprehensive review of the area and offer recommendations for future research by exploring the antecedents, consequences, mechanisms, and designs of research on abusive supervision. Design/methodology/approach: Content analysis was conducted to review and analyze studies on abusive supervision in the context of hospitality. Previous studies were searched in the EBSCO, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar electronic databases. Findings: Thirty-six referred articles related to abusive supervision in hospitality were reviewed across four key areas, namely, antecedents, consequences, mechanisms, and research design. After reviewing the research on abusive supervision in the context of hospitality, this paper offers future research directions with respect to research focus and research design. Research limitations/implications: This paper only included English articles from peer-reviewed journals on abusive supervision. The number of reviewed articles was relatively small. This limitation may have arisen because abusive supervision is a new research field and is still a sensitive topic. Practical implications: The results of this work may encourage managers to minimize or even halt abusive supervision. From an organizational perspective, formal policies may be developed to regularize supervisors’ behavior. In turn, employees could use this paper to learn further about abusive behavior and how to handle it effectively. Social implications: The review highlighted the negative consequences of abusive supervision. Managers should urgently realize the seriousness of abusive supervision and develop effective policies to minimize its negative effect. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the emerging literature on abusive supervision in the context of hospitality by identifying key research trends and framing the outlines of empirical studies. It identifies research gaps, and as the first review of abusive supervision in hospitality, it may encourage researchers to explore the topic on the basis of the characteristics of the sector and offer suggestions for future research.

This study focuses on the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and examines emotional exhaustion as a potential explanation for why variability may result in lower satisfaction. In addition, this study examines organizational identification as a potential moderator of the relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. A total of 244 nonacademic staff in two universities in Ecuador responded to the surveys. The results demonstrated that emotional exhaustion mediated the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and that organizational identification weakened the negative relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. This research is among the first to investigate emotional variability in organizations and examine the role of organizational identification in buffering the negative effect of emotional variability.

Based on in-depth interviews conducted with working mothers in the U.S. hotels' industry, the current research developed a process model depicting working mothers’ maternity leave and transition experiences under the current framework of maternity leave and other family and work support policies. Drawing on prior theories and interview findings, our research elucidates the process of how female hospitality professionals cope with challenges and strive to navigate post-maternity life while re-adapting to their professional roles and work-life balance. The model developed from our interview findings brings to light the pivotal role maternity leave and other family support policies play in enabling or inhibiting hospitality working mothers to re-adapt during the post-maternity life stage. Based on such findings, we provide discussions on the theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research agendas related to this topic.

•Work social support serves as a key boundary condition affecting the relationship between career adaptability and turnover intentions.•When work social support is low, employees with high career adaptability show higher turnover intention than those with low career adaptability.•When work social support is high, employees with high career adaptability show lower turnover intention than those with low career adaptability.•Proactive personality is positively associated with employees’ career adaptability.•Work social support moderates the indirect relationship between proactive personality and turnover intentions through career adaptability. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospitality organizations are trying to help their employees overcome various challenges. Career adaptability has proven to be useful in helping employees handle challenges, while proactive personality is a critical factor affecting the formation of career adaptability. However, career adaptability can be a double-edged sword, and it is unclear how it may impact employees’ turnover intentions. Drawing on social exchange theory, the current study reconciles mixed findings in the literature by proposing a moderated mediation model suggesting that work social support moderates the indirect relationship between proactive personality and turnover intentions through career adaptability. Results based on data collected from 339 hotel employees in the United States indicate that proactive personality is positively associated with employees’ career adaptability. More importantly, work social support significantly moderates the relationship between career adaptability and turnover intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

In light of the conspicuous absence of workplace harassment (“acoso laboral”) in the Ecuadorian Constitution and the country’s Labor and Penal Codes, this article reports on an exploratory study about abusive supervision, a form of workplace harassment, in the country’s hospitality industry. Based on a review of the literature on various forms of workplace harassment, the study investigated employee opinions about their supervisors’ behaviors and found that abusive supervision is a prominent issue in the Ecuadorian hospitality industry and that it is signifcantly related to employees’ intentions to leave the organization. The study advocates future research into other components of workplace harassment in these and other industries in the country and into the development of measures that reduce abusive supervision and workplace harassment.

In this research the authors investigate the relationship among emotional labor strategies, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention, specifically in the hospitality industry. The sample comes from hotel employees in China. The conclusions obtained by the authors are: (1) Surface acting positively influences emotional exhaustion; deep acting negatively influences emotional exhaustion; automatic emotional regulation, however, has little significance on emotional exhaustion. (2) Emotional exhaustion positively influences turnover intention. (3) Emotional labor strategies influence turnover intention through the role of emotional exhaustion. Implications and suggestions for human resource management practice are discussed in the study.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of privacy concern, irritation and personalization on Millennials’ perceptions of personalized smartphone advertising avoidance in a restaurant context. The hospitality industry has witnessed a huge surge in mobile activity over the past few years. Mobility opens up a new communication channel and allows industry to connect with their guests in a more personalized way. However, not all customers welcome the personalized advertisements. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 159 Millennials enrolled in a large state university in the Eastern USA using an online self-administered survey. These Millennials were asked to use a restaurant’s smartphone application for 30 days and then complete a survey based on their perceptions of personalized advertising. Descriptive analysis, reliability, factor analysis and regression analysis were used to evaluate the relationships among the four constructs: privacy concern, irritation, personalization and advertising avoidance, with the first three variables as predictors and advertising avoidance as an outcome. Findings The results suggest that advertising irritation is positively related to advertising avoidance, perceived personalization is related with less advertising avoidance, while privacy concern is not related to advertising avoidance. Originality/value Although advertising avoidance has previously been studied for the past few decades, little research has explored the underlying mechanisms of the Millennials’ avoidance of personalized smartphone advertising in a restaurant context. The current research suggests information pertinent to strategies for marketing personalized smartphone advertisement for restaurant companies.

Maternity leave policies can have a profound impact on working mothers’ well-being and career advancement. While U.S. maternity leave practices lag behind most developed countries, no study has looked into this issue in the lodging context, leaving an important research gap that needs to be addressed. This research note takes a mixed-methods approach to study maternity leave policies and practices in the U.S. lodging industry via both desk-top research and interviews with human resource managers and working mothers in the lodging industry. This study fills in an important literature gap on current maternity leave policy and practices in U.S. lodging organizations and aspires to stimulate future research on maternity leave policies at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.

Employee strain is a significant and costly issue for hospitality organizations. This study investigated the change trajectory of strain pre, during, and post a discrete stressful event, and how cohesion and group emotional variability altered the shape of the trajectory. Using an experience sampling method approach, we gathered 402 daily observations from 84 workers in a period that included a specific stressful event, the opening of a one-night “theme dinner” restaurant that catered to dinner guests from the general public. We used latent growth curve modeling to investigate the change of strain among employees over time. The results showed that indicators of strain displayed inverted U-shaped trajectories (i.e., strain increased before and decreased after the stressful event) and that group cohesion and emotional variability affected the starting value and the change trajectory of strain. By investigating strain on a daily basis and considering group-based influences in response to discrete stressful events, this study provides significant implications to the hospitality literature and suggestions to hospitality managers on how to alleviate the impact of strain among their workforce.

This study examines whether and how employee perfectionism influences the mechanism of customer-driven organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and the later formation of employee well-being. Customer-driven OCB, conceptualized in this study, comprises the dual effects of OCB toward customers (OCB-C) on OCB toward a work organization (OCB-O) and OCB oward coworkers (OCB-I). Drawing on a perfectionistic perspective with the conservation of resources theory (COR), this study proposes that perfectionism leads to customer-driven OCB, which then influences employee work and home well-being. Using multi-phase data collected from hotel employees, results confirm that self-oriented perfectionism improves OCB-C, as well as the positive effects of OCB-C on OCB-O, OCB-I, work well-being, and home well-being. Moreover, OCB-O supports employee work well-being. This study not only demonstrates the importance of service employees’ self-oriented perfectionism in motivating OCB-C but also clarifies the effects of OCB-C on improving other types of OCB and well-being.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend research on fun in the workplace by focussing on its relationship with job embeddedness among Millennials. This research examined the influence of four dimensions of fun, including fun activities, manager support for fun, coworker socializing, and fun job responsibilities, on embeddedness. In addition, this research assessed the impact of fun relative to other aspects of the employment experience. Design/methodology/approach Data were obtained from 234 full-time working Millennials via survey methodology. Findings Fun job responsibilities were the most dominant predictor of embeddedness followed by perceived career opportunities and praise and rewards. The other dimensions of fun accounted for significant variance in embeddedness, yet their influence was more modest. Research limitations/implications The research demonstrated that fun plays a role in enhancing Millennials’ embeddedness, accounting for significant additional variance beyond other important aspects of the employment experience. At the same time, some aspects of fun were more dominant predictors of embeddedness than others, and other aspects of the employment experience were more dominant predictors than certain aspects of fun. These findings should be interpreted in the context of the primary limitation that the data were cross-sectional. Practical implications Workplace fun may play a role in enhancing embeddedness, but organizations should not lose sight of other human resource management practices. Originality/value The present study examined the role of workplace fun in a more nuanced perspective by examining its relationship on embeddedness relative to other important constructs.

Ram (2015. Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism. doi:10.1080/13683500.2015.1064364) posits that violence and harassment are areas of concern within the hospitality industry, and scholarly interest in abusive supervision in the workplace has grown since the last decade. This study extends Ram's (2015. Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism. doi:10.1080/13683500.2015.1064364) assertion by examining the effect of abusive supervision experiences on student employees’ turnover intentions in a hospitality and tourism context in a high power distance culture, Ecuador. The results showed that abusive supervision was positively related to turnover intentions, and its effect was stronger than co-worker support, with the abusive supervision–turnover intentions relationship being fully mediated by perceived organizational support (POS). In addition, co-worker emotional support was found to attenuate the negative effects of abusive supervision on POS. All in all, the findings highlight the roles of POS in explaining the relation between abusive supervision and turnover intentions and co-worker emotional support in buffering the negative effect of abusive supervision. The important role of culture is discussed.

Research has been extensively focusing on the overall mean levels of positive and negative emotions, while paying much less attention to how fluctuating they are across time. This research explores the impacts of employee emotional variability with emotional exhaustion as a potential mediator and psychological withdrawal and job satisfaction as outcomes. In a sample of 109 student employees working in two hotels, this study utilized experience sampling methodology to examine the effects of variability in both positive emotions and negative emotions across 9 weeks. The results of the longitudinal design suggested that higher variability in negative emotions predicted more emotional exhaustion, which in turn, was associated with less job satisfaction and more psychological withdrawal. The findings support the notion that too much variability in negative emotions is maladaptive. Findings can inform the practice on reducing employee exhaustion and promoting satisfaction and retention for employees.

This article explores the relationships among employee moral efficacy, coworker emotional support, coworker instrumental support, and employee voice behavior regarding abusive supervision in the hospitality industry in Ecuador: a high power distance culture. The results indicate that employees’ moral efficacy predicted their voice behavior with regards to abusive supervision and that coworker emotional support strengthened this relation. However, an interaction effect between moral efficacy and coworker instrumental support on voice behavior was not found. This study provides a theoretical extension of the voice literature by introducing the roles of moral efficacy and coworker support, and has practical implications for the hospitality workplace.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of service providers’ attractiveness in service jobs and examine the underlying psychological mechanisms that may explain consumers’ different attitudes and potential behavior. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental design was utilized in this paper. Study 1 used a scenario depicting a front-desk agent performing check-in procedures and Study 2 used a scenario depicting a restaurant server. Data were analyzed using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro. Findings – Study 1 demonstrated the mediating effect of perceived interpersonal skills in the relations between front desk agent attractiveness and participant positive word-of-mouth and service satisfaction. Study 2 reaffirmed this finding and showed that the attractiveness of servers positively impacted participants’ perceptions of the servers’ interpersonal skill and participants’ tipping behavior. Furthermore, the relation between attractiveness and interpersonal skills was moderated by servers’ genders and participants’ levels of self-esteem, such that the effect was stronger in response to female servers for participants with relatively low self-esteem. In addition, the effect of the three-way interaction among server gender, server’s level of attractiveness, and participant’s level of self-esteem on tipping was mediated by participant’s perceived interpersonal skills. Originality/value - This article investigated the under-researched constructs of participants’ self-esteem and service providers’ gender and their moderating roles within the service context. These results suggest that responses to service providers can be impacted by the attractiveness and gender of the provider and customers’ self-esteems, despite equivalent objective performance of the provider.

Purpose – This study aims to provide researchers in hospitality management with a comprehensive understanding of the experience sampling method (ESM) and to engage them in the use of ESM in their future research. With this critical discussion of the advantages and challenges of the method, researchers can apply it appropriately to deepen and broaden their research findings. Design/methodology/approach – This study chooses an empirical example in the context of hotel employees’ surface acting, tiredness and sleep quality to illustrate the application of ESM. Based on the example, this paper conducts two-level modeling in Mplus, including a cross-level mediation analysis and mean centering. Findings – This paper demonstrates the applicability and usefulness of ESM for hospitality research and provides a detailed demonstration of how to use the statistical program Mplus to analyze ESM data. With this paper, researchers will be able to consider how to engage ESM in their future studies. Originality/value – This paper is among the first to provide a hands-on demonstration of ESM to hospitality researchers. We call for more research in hospitality management to use ESM to answer complex and pressing research questions.

The extant literature has suggested that high-performance human resources practices (HRPs), such as employee training, employment security, and a results-oriented appraisal system, promote favorable employee behaviors. This research predicts that such practices render a mechanism that reduces hotel employees’ propensity to quit through lowering their emotional exhaustion. However, does this mechanism work more effectively in hotels with a strong brand? To address this question, we propose a multilevel research model to assess the effectiveness of HRPs under different conditions of brand equity. Drawing on both social exchange theory and social identification theory, the current study works to advance the literature by investigating the cross-level brand equity boundary condition on the HRPs−intention-to-quit moderated mediation process from two independent sets of data. It advances the literature by bridging the research gap between human resource management and brand management.

Online employee scheduling has increased in popularity in recent years, especially among hourly workers who have grown up in the information age and the flexibility it provides increases their sense of job autonomy. This article reports on two studies that investigated the impact of work scheduling flexibility on employees’ personal well-being. One study collected data from current users of an online scheduling product and the other study collected information from hospitality management students who are potential future users of online scheduling software. The studies found that online scheduling helps to enhance employees’ personal well-being through satisfaction with schedule flexibility and job autonomy.

Although past research has examined the link between emotional labor and turnover in organizational contexts, relatively little research has focused specifically on supervisors' experiences of emotional labor and turnover. In the present study, supervisors' levels of communication are posited to affect the interactive relation between expressing genuine emotions and engaging in surface acting because the interactive relation is expected to be more pronounced for supervisors who communicate less. This study was administered to 144 supervisors in four Chinese hotel companies. The results showed that the interactive effects of genuine emotions and surface acting on turnover intentions were strengthened when supervisors communicated with other colleagues less intimately but that there was not an effect related to the extent to which they communicated with many colleagues. The findings extend previous literature by demonstrating that a lack of intimate communication will increase intentions to leave among supervisors who express less genuine emotions and who engage in more surface acting.

The study reported here investigated how hospitality students’ perceptions of a required hospitality industry work experience changed over time. By means of an experience sampling method, we captured information about the students’ emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, psychological withdrawal, and performance on an ongoing basis over a 9-week period during which they were required to work weekly shifts in 2 campus hotels. We found that whereas job satisfaction and job performance followed a linear decrease over time, psychological withdrawal followed a linear increase. Prior work expectations predicted the students’ initial levels of job satisfaction and psychological withdrawal. We elaborate on the benefits and future uses in hospitality research of latent growth curve analysis and experience sampling, which are relatively unexplored data collection and analytical tools in the field of hospitality management that enable researchers to measure trajectories of change in subjects’ attitudes and Q4 perceptions over time.

The incidence of depression has been increasing. One of the best interventions for depression is taking antidepressant medications. However, the stigma of taking antidepressants has been shown to be a barrier not only to seeking an antidepressant regimen but also adhering to it. This may have negative consequences for people who suffer from depression. Thus, in two studies, we investigate the incidence of felt stigma of taking antidepressants among clinically depressed individuals who take antidepressants and the effectiveness of two possible interventions to reduce this stigma among others. Study 1 revealed that stigma toward individuals who take antidepressants is a reality, either because people were not educated about depression and antidepressants, or because they did not show empathy or did not take on perspectives from the victim’s point-of-view. Based on these results, we used an experimental design in Study 2 to investigate the effects of education and perspective-taking interventions in diminishing the stigma of taking antidepressants. These results suggest that participant gender played a moderating role in the effectiveness of education and perspective taking, such that a combination of the two interventions resulted in lower stigma for men but not for women. These results suggest that people can be trained (using a simple, low-fidelity intervention) to be more accepting of antidepressant use among their friends, family members, and colleagues, resulting in better outcomes for those who benefit from taking antidepressants.

This study investigates the relationships between three different emotional labor strategies (surface acting, deep acting, and genuine emotions) and turnover intentions and introduces the role of in-depth communication with colleagues as a potential moderator. This study was administered to employees in four Chinese hotel companies. Frontline employees were asked to participate in the survey and 216 valid responses were obtained for data analysis. The results showed that surface acting and deep acting were associated with turnover intentions, and in-depth communication with colleagues moderated the relation between deep acting and turnover intentions. Although there was not a direct effect of genuine emotions on turnover intentions, in-depth communication was a significant moderator of this relation. These findings extend previous literature by demonstrating the role of in-depth communication in shaping employees’ retention.