Impact of customer verbal aggression on employee emotional exhaustion and turnover intention an emprical study of ground service staff in vietnamese aviation industry

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business --- Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang

IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL

AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER INTENTION:

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF GROUND SERVICE STAFF IN VIETNAMESE AVIATION INDUSTRY

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2015

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang

IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL

AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER INTENTION:

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF GROUND SERVICE STAFF IN VIETNAMESE AVIATION INDUSTRY

ID: 22130082

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

SUPERVISOR: Dr NGUYEN THI NGUYET QUE

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2015

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que for her kindness, professional guidance and encouragement as well as dedicated support, valuable comments, instructions through my thesis

Secondly, I am sincerely thankful to Professor Nguyen Dinh Tho, Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, and Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan as proposal examination committee Their comments and meaningful suggestions significantly contribute to this research completion

Finally, my special gratitude is extended to all instructors and staffs of International School of Business – University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for their teaching and guidance during my master course

ii

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impacts of customer verbal aggression to emotional exhaustion and turnover intention of ground service staff in Vietnam aviation industry This research framework was tested through a survey on employees from ground customer service in Noi Bai International Airport, Da Nang International Airport, and Tan Son Nhat International Airport The findings of this research showed significant and positive effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention Furthermore, the research found that customer verbal aggression positively relates on stress appraisal; negative affectivity positively relates to customer verbal aggression and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression, as well as stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression positively relates

to turnover intention Employee emotional exhaustion still has the significance to turnover intention These findings suggest that the organization should consider and encourage employees’ spirit to be motivated and inspired in their job Additionally, the organization should have solution to minimize the verbal attack of customers to employees

Key words: customer verbal aggression, negative affectivity, stress appraisal,

emotional exhaustion, turnover intention

iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IATA: International Air Transport Association

EFA: Exploratory Factor Analysis

CFA: Confirmatory Factor Analysis

SEM: Structural Equation Modeling

CVA: Customer verbal aggression

EMO: Emotional exhaustion

TOI: Turnover intention

NEG: Negative affectivity

STRESS: Stress appraisal

SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science

AMOS: Analysis of Moment Structure

AVE: Average Variances Extracted

iv

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: In-depth interview respondent information 26

Table 4.1: Source of data collection 31

Table 4.2: Sample characteristics 32

Table 4.3: Reliability test results after deleting items NEG1 and NEG2 33

Table 4.4: KMO & Barlett’s test 33

Table 4.5: KMO & Barlett’s test after deleting EMO2 & EMO3 34

Table 4.6: Rotated component matrix after deleting EMO2 & EMO3 35

Table 4.7: Reliability test results of new variables 36

Table 4.8: Standardized regression weights 38

Table 4.9: The first AVE 39

Table 4.10: The second AVE 39

Table 4.11: Regression weights 42

Table 4.12: Standardized regression weights (bootstrap method error) 43

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: Vietnam aviation labor structure 2

Figure 1.2: Vietnam aviation educational labor standard 3

Figure 3.1: Research process 21

Figure 4.1: CFA of 05 constructs 37

Figure 4.2: Second CFA after deleting CVA3 and CVA7 40

Figure 4.3: Structural results 41

Figure 4.4: Final model after testing 52

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF FIGURES v

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 2

1.1 Research Background ··· 2

1.2 Research Problem ··· 6

1.3 Research Objective and Research Questions ··· 8

1.4 Research Methodology and Scope ··· 9

1.5 Research Significance ··· 9

1.6 Structure of the research ··· 10

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 12

2.1 Review previous study ··· 12

2.1 Hypotheses and Research Model Development ··· 18

2.3 Conceptual model ··· 23

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 25

3.1 Research process ··· 25

3.2 Measurement Scale ··· 26

3.3 Questionnaire Design ··· 29

3.4 Sample size and Sampling method ··· 34

3.5 Data Analysis Method ··· 35

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS 38

4.1 Data Collection ··· 38

vii

4.2 Respondents’ Demographics ··· 38

4.2 Reliability Analysis ··· 39

4.3 Exploratory Factor Analysis ··· 40

4.4 Evaluate the measurement by CFA ··· 44

4.5 SEM Testing and Bootstrap Method ··· 48

4.6 Results of testing hypotheses ··· 51

4.7 Discussion of the hypotheses ··· 53

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND LIMITATION 56

5.1 Conclusion about hypotheses and research problem ··· 56

5.2 Research contribution ··· 57

5.3 Limitation and future research ··· 59

2

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

This is the opening chapter of the research In this part, the overview of Vietnam civil aviation and labor structure are described first The second the author bases on the reality of aviation labor resource to show the research problem, which is the author would like to research in this thesis Research objective, research questions, research methodology and scope, research significance, and thesis structure are the next parts in this chapter that the author presents to overview the content and assignment through the thesis

1.1 Research Background

1.1.1 About Vietnam Civil Aviation

For such countries, civil aviation is always amazed technical and economic characteristics because it is application of scientific achievements in the most advanced techniques Civil aviation activities are not only economic in nature but also merely closely related to security, national defense, and foreign economic relations So far, Vietnam civil aviation has made encouraging progress with reforms on the path of modernization In recent years, although the world economy passes the crisis and recession period, overall still grows Among them, the aviation traffic operation always gets high speed Especially, strong resurgence of the emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific, including Vietnam as a basis for favorable forecast output growth of the aviation sector

The wings of Vietnam aviation today not only fly within domestic airport, but also to many continents in the world with the new modern aircrafts The airports have more facilities for passengers, many terminals, runways, and aprons are extended Vietnam aviation market has achieved remarkable progress in the last five years the average annual growth of 15% According to figures reported by the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam in 2010 - 2014, Vietnam Aviation Service continues to maintain high growth rates According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in the period from 2013 to 2017, Vietnam aviation market is growing fast and dynamic, ranked number seven among the fastest growing market world In 2014, total

3

passenger transport market was estimated at 32 million passengers (up to 10.6%, compared with 2013) and commodity markets estimated at 706 thousand tons (up to 12.6%, compared with 2013) In the period 2010 - 2014, the average growth rate of passenger transport and freight transport respectively reached 12.4% and 14.6% Located in the region of Southeast Asia, Vietnam market witnessed strong demand growth in operating passenger transport and freight, to promote the development of aviation According to the project "Master plan for Vietnam tourism development to

2020 and vision to 2030", by 2020, Vietnam will attract 10,5 million international passengers, attend to 47.5 million domestic arrivals; by 2030, Vietnam will attract 18 million international tourists and 71 million domestic visitors In 2020, the total revenue from tourism reached 18,5 billion US dollars, accounting for 7% of GDP; 2030 reached 35,2 billion US dollars, accounting for 7.5% of GDP Under the scheme, predicted the tourism industry will achieve an average growth rate of over 30% in revenue and 20%

of passenger traffic

1.1.2 Aviation Labor Structure

Along with the renewal of equipment is the progress on the management capacity, professional skills, quality of service, and service style of management staff, technicians, air traffic control, flight attendances, ground service staff, etc They are basic training or advanced training in domestic and foreign operations The process of integration and the development requires the mobilization and use of force is the total resources, including in particular internal factors In the internal factors, the human factor is the decisive factor in the development of strong and sustainable, ensuring competitiveness in the future Therefore, Vietnam aviation industry has focused the work of planning, training, and retraining of staff and workers under the program to reach international standards In addition to the academic programs in the country, groups of airports was contracted trained, sent staff officers to study abroad, have access

to and learn technology, advanced science, apparel services unit

As of December 2012, the aviation labor is 32,695 people with the following structure:

4

Figure 1.1 Vietnam aviation labor structure

(Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012)

The average age of employees is from 31 to 33, which under 30 is 37.3%,

30-40 is 35.2%, 30-40-50 is 17.9%, and over 50 is 9.6% Educational level of staffs is listed below:

- Postgraduate: 1020 people (3.1%)

- University: 13,647 people (41.7%)

- Intermediate: 6565 people (20.1%)

- Primary and technical workers: 9737 people (29.8%)

- Unskilled workers: 1726 people (5.3%)

5

Figure 1.2 Vietnam aviation educational labor standards

(Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012)

It was found that the most education level of aviation employees is university with high qualification With the new fresh blood of the staff and high qualification, the future

of the aviation industry will increasingly develop and go further in the world Although the quality employees is increasing, aviation labor shortage still occurs and it is considered a difficult problem for the managers As of now, the units, organizations, or companies operating in the sector of civil aviation recruit thousands of employees each year to ensure the stability of its operating units The percentage of turnover, “switch job” of aviation labors have tended to rise faster and higher at an alarming rate According to Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam in the last few years, the turnover rate ranged from the average 20% to 40% per year Particularly, this ratio is as high as

in the stitching units of air traffic or airport corporation operation that directly relevant parts and play a key role in the activities of civil aviation sector According to the report from Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (2012), ground service staff is a part of air traffic and one of the sectors has high turnover rate The airlines recruit ground service staff twice each year because of the shortage of employees compared to the operation

Postgraduate 3%

University 42%

Intermediate 20%

Primary and technical workers 30%

Unskilled workers 5%

a day that goes by without a passenger complaining Customers want the airline employees to listen to whatever is irritating them Sometimes, passenger rude behavior

is just too much They push; even hit the airline staff when they feel angry”

According to specific tasks such as ground service staff, capable of frequent exposure to different passengers coming from different countries require the staffs more knowledge and skills with the best and professional service style The pressure from work requirements and customer satisfaction make aviation employees depressed In particular, the passengers who have bad attitudes with verbal aggression will cause the hurt to the self-esteem of employees The customers use heavy words to criticize or even insult the aviation employees take place more and more These cause negative affectivity such as distressed, irritable or upset for the staffs; they will have bad mood and no motivation in their job The attack of passengers to aviation staff appear in the press many times Example: Chau Nhu Quynh (Dan Tri News, 2015) reported that one woman was banned 7 millions VNĐ because of hitting one-man aviation staff The reason for this action was the woman did not want to pay crib free On the other hand, T Ha (Nguoi Lao Dong News, 2015) reported, one passenger hit the aviation staff because the staff

7

asked him to check the identity card Many articles appeared in the newspaper to report the assault of customer to employees Mr Lai Xuan Thanh, Director of Vietnam Civil Aviation Authority said, “In the first 6 months of 2015, the transport of passengers by airplanes was approximately 30 millions Also during this period, there was 41 incident

of safety, aviation security While technical problems reduced, the incidents involving humans have increased sharply More and more incidents happened because many passengers did not read the regulations, or they grasp the rules of the airline industry but deliberately ignored Many passengers were cursing, assaulting, threatening staff procedures being prompt for violating regulations” The pressures from high requirement of the job, coupled with pressure from customers make employees feel stress Since then, they decide to leave the organization and find another job, which make them feel better

Some researches of foreign authors mentioned and studied about the impact of customer verbal aggression to employees, such as:

“Influence of customer verbal aggression to turnover intention” (Xiaoyan Li and Erhua Zhou, 2013)

“The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation

of service employees” (Grandey et al., 2004)

“Outcomes of customer verbal aggression among hotel employees” (Osman M Karatepe, Ilkay Yorganci and Mine Haktanir, 2009)

“Frontline service employees’ customer-related social stressors, emotional exhaustion, and service recovery performance: customer orientation as a moderator” (Taegoo Terry Kim, Soyon Paek, Chang Hwan Choi, and Gyehee Lee, 2012)

“Coping with customer aggression”(Ruhama Goussinsky, 2012)

Indeed, Dormann and Zapf (2004) stated that customer abusive behavior is considered a major source of stress for service workers However, only very few studies have attempted to investigate the buffering role of organizational or personal resources against the negative influence of being subjected to frequently abusive and hostile behavior from customers Additionally, these studies are focus on the call center

8

employees, hotel employees or general service employees (including airlines employees) The domestic and overseas researches about customer verbal aggression to ground service staffs in aviation are rare to find out The majority studies about aviation employees in Vietnam mention about the factors to affect the turnover rate are from organization, not from customers

From these facts, the study is conducted to clarify the effects of customer verbal aggression to emotional exhaustion and turnover intention of ground service staff in Vietnam aviation, along with negative affectivity and stress appraisal factors Since then, offering the solutions to overcome and minimize the extent of that influence

1.3 Research Objective and Research Questions

- Is there a significant effect of customer verbal aggression on stress appraisal

of customer verbal aggression?

- Is there a significant effect of negative affectivity on customer verbal

aggression?

- Is there a significant effect of negative affectivity on stress appraisal of

customer verbal aggression?

- Is there a significant effect of customer verbal aggression on employee

emotional exhaustion?

- Is there a significant effect of stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression

on employee emotional exhaustion?

- Is there a significant effect of customer verbal aggression on turnover

intention?

Research Scope

This study is to research the impact of customer verbal aggression to the emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in aviation industry, especially in ground service staff The survey will be conducted only through Facebook Messenger and directly deliver to aviation employees in Vietnam only Due to limited time, the researcher only focuses on two main kinds of service staff are check-in agent and passenger service agent People whom response the questionnaire mostly come from Ha Noi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City In Ha Noi and Da Nang, the questionnaire survey will sent by Facebook Messenger because of the distance In Ho Chi Minh City, the paper survey will be directly delivered to employees in Tan Son Nhat International Airport

1.5 Research Significance

According to the findings in the end of this research, the author hopes to provide

a general outlook about influence of customer aggression to emotional exhaustion and

10

decision to quit job of ground service employees Based on those, the organization as well as the managers has more detail vision about the popular problem nowadays Additionally, they can understand factors to relate with customer verbal aggression as negative affectivity and stress appraisal Since then, the managers will have solutions to retain their employees and reduce the bullying situation of passengers to aviation employees

On the other hand, this research is also vital for appropriate policy implementation as issue the punishment of cursing, assaulting, and threatening aviation employees By having a good understanding about factors that have influence of customer verbal aggression on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention, the government can easily have policies to protect the employees and reduce turnover rate, which is increasing sharply

1.6 Structure of the research

The research includes five parts:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter introduces the research background as well as research problems, research objectives and questions, research methodology and scope, and research significance

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypotheses

This chapter presents literature reviews of customer verbal aggression, employee turnover intention, stress appraisal, negative affectivity, and employee emotional exhaustion The hypotheses develop from these relationships

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Research process, measurement scales, questionnaire design, data collection method, sampling design, and data analysis method are presented more details in this chapter

Chapter 4: Data Analysis

11

This chapter expresses all research results of the study This is the most important part of the research including Sample Descriptive Statistic, Reliability Analysis, Exploratory Factors Analysis, CFA, and SEM The discussion is also represented in this chapter after having the results

Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implication, and Limitation

Conclusions present a conclusion of the findings in the study, suggest managerial implementations based on the result of previous chapters, and give limitations that impact on the finding as well as future direction

12

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter mainly introduces the theories, which are proposed by many scholars in academic field and are related to all the concepts and research model At first, the author introduces the definition of customer verbal aggression and turnover intention Next, the previous research of these concepts and their related discussion are mentioned Finally, based on these theories and the relation of previous research, the hypotheses of relationship among these constructs and conceptual model are proposed

2.1 Review previous study

2.1.1 Definition of main concepts

2.1.1.1 Turnover Intention

Employee turnover is the rotation of workers around the labor market; between firms, jobs, and occupation; and between the states of employment and unemployment (Abassi et al, 2000) The term “turnover” is defined by Price (1977) as the ratio number

of members who have left an organization during the period being considered divided

by the average number of people in that organization during the period Frequently, managers refer to turnover as the entire process associated with filling a vacancy

Sut and Chad (2011) indicated that employee turnover is cause of economic losses of organization It reduces greatly the job efficiency Similarly, Barak et al., (2001) suggested that employee turnover is terror and costly, it reduces organizational effectiveness and employee productivity to a certain extent, and manager must spend more energy and material to develop a new talent to replace the employees who leave out Hence, employee turnover is worth managers to pay attention to invisible burden According to Wright and Bonett (2007), their results showed that employee turnover could be divided to involuntary or voluntary The most reasons for turnover can be either voluntary or involuntary Voluntary turnover occurs when an employee wants to leave and eventually decides to leave organization with variety causes It is likely the employee accepted a position, which has a better treatment whether physical, or spiritual cares and it will be negative impact on the organization Another situation, an employee asked to leave the organization for a variety of reasons including layoffs, poor job

13

performance, or other performances harm to benefit of company Wright and Bonett (2007) studied that a large number of scholars have determined that intent to stay of leave relates strongly to voluntary turnover According to Price (1997), he suggested that most organizational research of turnover is voluntary quits Basically, the researchers concentrate to research on employee turnover intention due to the data of employees who leaving voluntarily is difficult to collect (Currivan, 2000; Price, 1997)

Many scholars defined that turnover intention is the single best predictor of turnover and as a key element in study employee behavior, and be the last step before the employee voluntary too (Lee and Bruvold, 2003) However, Van Dick et al (2004) defined that an employee’s intention to leave is not an actual turnover Nevertheless, it

is also rejected that turnover intention is the best predictor of actual turnover, it mean that employee has intent to stay with organizations, which have a positive effect to voluntary turnover (Griffeth et al 2000) Finally, turnover intentions have substantiated

of employee turnover to be robust accept from the most of scholars (Lee and Bruvold,

as cited in Roberts et al., 1999)

Therefore, what the definition about employee turnover intention is Some researchers defined that employee turnover intention is like a time - consuming process from thinking of quitting, intention to search a new job and intention to quit or stay (Jacqueline and Milton, 2007)

2.1.1.2 Customer Verbal Aggression

Infante and Gorden (1989, 1991) found that verbal aggression in the workplace

is associated positively with dissatisfaction with the source of the message and the job

in general Even though the service providers have trained their employees in delivering service with the standard, but its still depends on the customer perceptions of service value Unfriendly or aggression directed towards employees in service organizations is

a pervasive and growing problem (Grandey et al., 2004)

According to Dormann & Zapf (2004), customer verbal aggression is one of the dimensions to represent the customer-related social stressors Customer verbal aggression is defined as customers’ intentions to harm employees intentionally through

2.1.1.3 Employee Emotional Exhaustion

Before describing the theories of emotional exhaustion, first need to understand what is the emotion Crow LD and Crow A (1991) defines emotion as a state of turmoil

on the individual that serves as an inner adjustment (adjustment from inside) to the environment to achieve individual well-being and safety Emotions sometimes depart from the anger, sadness, fear, pleasure, love, surprise, annoyance, and embarrassment

Emotional exhaustion is part of a three-dimensional burnout: the emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low self-esteem (Maslach, 1993) According to Maslach (1993), people experiencing emotional exhaustion is characterized by the depletion of emotional resources, such as feelings of frustration, despair, sadness, helplessness, depression, apathy toward work and feels shackled by tasks in the work so that a person feels unable to provide psychological services Emotional exhaustion arises because someone is working too intense, dedicated and committed, working too much and too long first, and looking at their needs and desires as the second This causes them

to feel the pressure to give more This pressure can come from within themselves, from aviation employees in need Given these pressures, it can cause a sense of guilt, which

in turn encourages them to add more energy When reality does not support their ideals, they still struggle to achieve these ideals themselves until they drained resources, thus

a vacation, gets rest, or eliminates the cause of stress If a person becomes overburdened with stress, there is a possibility that he or she will suffer from emotional depletion This condition makes a person feel as though he or she does not have the necessary emotional and physical resources to meet the demands in their life Psychological effects may include irritability, anxiety, and frustration A sufferer may additionally experience varying degrees of fatigue, but it is possible that he/she will suffer from insomnia There

is a possibility that emotional depletion can lead to serious conditions, such as depression and gastrointestinal problems

There is not an accurate means to determine how much stress will result in emotional exhaustion Stress tolerance can greatly vary from one person to another It is believed, however, that individuals with strong coping skills are more capable of enduring greater amounts of stress and therefore less likely to suffer from emotional exhaustion

2.1.1.4 Negative Affectivity

The construct of negative affectivity arose from the emotion research literature,

and has been described generally as “a stable, heritable trait tendency to experience a broad range of negative feelings such as worry, anxiety, self-criticisms, and a negative self-view” (Keogh & Reidy, 2000, p 108) Watson and Clark (1984) defined negative affectivity (NA) as a higher-order personality variable describing the extent to which an individual experiences, either in terms of frequency or intensity, high levels of distressing emotions such as anger, hostility, fear, and anxiety Studies contrasting

16

individuals high and low on negative affectivity (low and high NA individuals) show that the latter experience negative moods and emotions across situations, regardless of the specific stimulus (Watson & Clark, 1984) High NA people also tend to focus on the negative aspects of themselves and others and to be less satisfied with their lives (Watson & Pennebaker, 1989) In a review of early research on negative affectivity, Watson and Clark (1984) found that persons high in NA were more independent and individualistic than those who were low Because of this and because of their tendency

to experience and report negative mood states, high NA persons are often perceived of hostile, demanding, and distant

High NA individuals focus on the negative aspect of themselves, their jobs, and the world in general (Watson & Clark, 1984); hence, they are likely to interpret slightly negative, or perhaps even ambiguous, social information as threatening Conceivably, high NA people possess a heightened sensitivity to threat that leads them to direct hostile actions against the perceived source more frequently than do low NA persons This sequence may explain why high NA people are reportedly harder to like as employees and have worse relationships with their supervisors

2.1.1.5 Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression

Lazarus and Folkman (1984) defined that stress appraisal refers to the process

by which individuals evaluate and cope with a stressful event Stress appraisal theory is concerned with individuals’ evaluation of the event, rather than with the essential event People differ in how they construe what is happening to them and their opinions for coping There are two types of appraisal: primary and secondary In primary appraisal,

a person seeks answers as to the meaning of the situation with regard to their well-being

A person can appraise it as irrelevant, benign-positive or stressful If perceived as stressful then appraisal takes any of three forms i.e harm-loss, threat, or challenge The secondary appraisal includes evaluation of one’s resources and whether situation can be handled or not (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, Delongis & Gruen, 1986)

2.1.2 Review of previous studies

17

Prior to undertaking this research about the popular customer behavior to aviation employees, it was important to understand outcomes from previous studies The customer verbal aggression research usually concentrates on the service employees such

as call center employees, hotel employees or general service employees (including airlines employees) About the thesis in aviation industry, they mainly focus on the flight attendances that are directly face with customers every day It is difficult to find out the research about ground service staffs, and the thesis focus on the relationship between customers and ground service employees However, the author still refers the previous studies about customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention

to develop the model for this research

 In “The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees” (Alicia A Grandey, David N Dickter, and Hock-Peng Sin, 2004), these authors argued that work aggression or anger has typically focused on supervisors and co-workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressive customers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employees Study participants were customer service associates who worked full-time and had long tenures with the organization They spent all of their working time on the phone with customers, while finding and recording account information at a computer in a small space surrounded by other employees The authors explore the aggressive customers’ phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees The employees reported that customer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, through this varied by race and negative affectivity By using LISREL method, their data indicated that customer verbal aggression and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression positively related to emotional exhaustion

 In “Influence of customer verbal aggression to turnover intention” (Xiaoyan Li and Erhua Zhou, 2013), the authors discover new explanatory variables for employee turnover in call centers, this study seeks to examine the impact of customer verbal aggression on employee turnover intention According to Xiaoyan and Erhua, previous studies on workplace behaviors in call centers focused on customer

 In “The mediating role of organizational commitment between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention among customer service representatives in Parkistan” (Omar Rehman, Faisal Karim, Muhammad Rafiq, and Adil Mansoor, 2011), this study scrutinizes the relationship of emotional exhaustion to dependent variable turnover intention For this purpose, data was obtained from 133 respondents to check the relationship between variables The results of the entire study show that there is a significant relationship between dependent variable turnover intention and independent variables emotional exhaustion

2.1 Hypotheses and Research Model Development

2.2.1 Customer verbal aggression and Stress appraisal

Stress appraisal refers to the individual’s perception of a stressor as being stressful or threatening (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), typically accompanied by a negative emotion (e.g., fear, anger) and physiological arousal Richard Lazarus conducted research on stress and emotions for four decades He found a link between appraisals and stress In addition, appraisal is an evaluation of the significance of what

is going on between the person and the environment in terms of that person’s well being

Given our human discomfort with being the target of anger, and the fact that this behavior communicates that the goal of satisfied customers is not being met, it is likely that verbal aggression is highly stressful (Averill, 1983) The more often such an event occurs, the more likely that the event may be found to be stressful due to heightened states of arousal and apprehension Prior research has found that targets of frequent aggression are likely to experience more fear at work It should be acknowledged that an alternate possibility is that higher frequencies may induce

19

habituation to the negative stimuli However, people seem to be hard-wired to react strongly to such potentially threatening events Therefore, we expected that a higher of verbally aggressive customer is likely to be associated with a stronger appraisal of threat from such an event

H1: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Stress appraisal

of customer verbal aggression

2.2.2 The impact of Negative affectivity on Customer verbal aggression and

Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression

Negative affectivity is characterized by dissatisfaction, pessimism and a

tendency to be reactive to the normal stresses of daily life and to dwell on the negative side of the world (Watson and Clark, 1984) Affective personality type has been

identified as an important factor for appraising stress and for adopting strategies for dealing with stress Previous studies have found that high-negative affectivity

individuals tend to respond more strongly to negative events at work (Penney and Spector, 2005), and to adopt less effective coping strategies when dealing with stress such as avoidance, disengagement and denial ( Kluger and DeNisi, 1996)

Angry, frustrated, distraught, upset people have long been regarded as being prone to aggressive behaviors Grandey et al., (2004) cited in Berkowitz (1989) proposed that all states of all negative affect – instead of only frustration – deserve to be recognized as causes of aggression Moreover, although not all varieties of negative affect have been tested for aggression – enhancing effects, it is clear that some of them

are quite capable of increasing aggression

An individual difference that is likely to contribute to increased frequency and stress appraisal of customer aggression is the negative affectivity of the service provider Surprisingly, negative affectivity’s role in self-reported work aggression has been omitted from recent research (Schat & Kelloway, 2000) A person high in negative affectivity is more likely to have negative world-view and to interpret ambiguous comments as negative (Spector, Chen, & O’Connell, 2000; Watson & Clark, 1984; Watson, Clark, & Tellengen, 1988) These tendencies may mean high negative

20

affectivity persons evoke more aggression from a customer (Buss, 1987) Similarly, someone high in negative affectivity has fewer coping resources and thus may perceive the event as more threatening (Spector et al., 2000) Therefore, negative affectivity corresponds with both the reported customer verbal aggression and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression

H2a: There is a positive impact of Negative affectivity on Customer verbal aggression

H2b: There is a positive impact of Negative affectivity on Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression

2.2.3 The impact of Customer verbal aggression and Stress appraisal on Employee emotional exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion refers to the lack of energy and depletion of emotional resources caused by excessive psychological demands (Boles et al., 2000) The conversation of resources theory states that resource loss is disproportionately more salient than resource gain (Hobfoll and Shirom, 2001) In response to customer demands, frontline employees in the service industry use their scare resources, such as emotion, with an expectation that they will receive positive outcomes in return However, they are routinely faced with customer aggression These unpleasant experiences with customers deplete their emotional resources and prevent employees from engaging in further mastery activities that help restore energy and positive feelings Therefore, service employees are especially susceptible to emotional exhaustion because when confronted with these stressors, employees have to make extra effort to regulate their emotions to meet their job demands (Van Jaarsveld et at., 2010; Zohar et

al., 2003)

The interaction of verbally aggressive customers would relate to emotional exhaustion Customer verbal aggression gives rise to emotional exhaustion (Grandey et al., 2004), which is the core dimension of burnout and refers to the lack of energy and depletion of emotional resources due to excessive psychological demands

21

Stress emotions have a unique effect on health and organizational outcomes beyond the frequency of work aggression (Schat & Kelloway, 2000), and thus may explain the relationship between the frequency of events and outcomes (Lazarus et al., 1985) As the level of customer aggression increases, the resulting state of burnout due

to the enhanced states of stress arousal According to Grandey et al (2004), the stress appraisal of the situation induces a strong state of emotional and physiological arousal The model focuses on the extent that employees feel threatened by customer verbal aggression (stress appraisal), while emotional exhaustion represented psychological and behavioral forms of strain

H3a: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Employee emotional exhaustion

H3b: There is a positive impact of Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression on Employee emotional exhaustion

2.2.4 The impact of Customer verbal aggression, Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression, and Employee emotional exhaustion on Turnover intention

Service workers have limited ways to respond to customer aggression Quarreling with customers could result in customer complaint, poor performance reviews, and sanctions from management As a result, service workers are restrained to problem solving, escape-avoidance, and support-seeking strategies to cope with customer aggression (Skinner et al., 2003) Specifically, escape-avoidance strategies involve withdrawing from a chaotic situation This seems to be a common response, as many have documented how workers seek to protect themselves from further damage (Cole and Bedeian, 2007; Halbesleben, 2006) According to the conversation of resources theory, excessive demands and/or insufficient resources within a particular role domain or between domains can result in negative affective and dysfunctional behaviors (Shaffer et al., 2001) Verbal abuse from customers elicits frequent and strong emotional reactions from service employees, because these negative events typically evoke strong and quick physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses (Taylor,

22

1991) These stresses and strains typically result in various negative outcomes (Karatepe

et al., 2009) Furthermore, Yagil (2008) indicates that job dissatisfaction, turnover intention, and absenteeism are among the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of customer aggression However, limited empirical evidence provides support for the relationship between customer aggression and turnover intention (Karatepe et al., 2009) Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H4a: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Turnover intention

According to Baba et al (2009), individuals who experience high emotional exhaustion are more likely to see their individual performance weaken and decrease their resources to respond to job demands, thereby provoking higher levels of emotional exhaustion and consequently affecting performance Employees experiencing emotional exhaustion may evoke a turnover reaction to cope with the status (Yavas et al., 2008; Sawyerr et al., 2009) Thus, employees experiencing high levels of emotional exhaustion should be more likely to leave their organizations In addition, researches of Hoonakker

et al., (2004), Korunka et al (2008) showed that emotional exhaustion positively associate with turnover intention

H4b: There is a positive impact of Employee emotional exhaustion on Turnover intention

Concerns on turnover intention as the outcome of stress have received considerable attention in the past decade Stress affects organizations by increasing absenteeism, decreasing commitment to work and increasing staff-turnover (Leka & Cox, 2008) According to Price (2004), work stress was viewed as the extent to which job duties cannot be fulfilled and was hypothesized to impact negatively on intent to stay through satisfaction and commitment Observation on previous studies (Walsh, 2011) showed that turnover intention commonly employed as dependent variable while using stressors as the independent variables

H4c: There is a positive impact of Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression on Turnover intention

23

2.3 Conceptual model

H1: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Stress appraisal

of customer verbal aggression

H2a: There is a positive impact of Negative affectivity on Customer verbal aggression

H2b: There is a positive impact of Negative affectivity on Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression

H3a: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Employee emotional exhaustion

H3b: There is a positive impact of Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression

on Employee emotional exhaustion

H4a: There is a positive impact of Customer verbal aggression on Turnover intention

H4b: There is a positive impact of Employee emotional exhaustion on Turnover intention

Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression

Turnover intention

Negative

affectivity

Customer verbal aggression

Employee emotional exhaustion H1+

of customer verbal aggression on employees’ emotional exhaustion and turnover intention The research methodology and findings will be discussed in next chapters

25

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

All procedures in this chapter, including qualitative and quantitative research, are described The qualitative study involves in-depth interview, is used to modify and refine the measures In order to evaluate the model and hypothesis, the study will adopt the quantitative research method that the data was collected by questionnaire survey

This chapter describes research process, research design, sampling method, data analysis, measurement scales, and the results

3.1 Research process

A qualitative study and a quantitative study were undertaken in this research Based on the previous research, the draft questionnaire consisted of five measurement scales: negative affectivity, frequency customer verbal aggression, stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention The draft questions were translated from English into Vietnamese The research design included two phase: a pilot research and a main survey

 Pilot research: Pilot test is a minor sort of a larger study, which is piloted to formulate for the study or research (Zikmund, 2003) A pilot study implicates that the pretesting of a research tool such like a new data collection technique To test the feasibility, equipment, and methods, researchers will frequently use a pilot study, a small-scale trial of the larger research design (Rowan, 2011) Moreover, the entire research is carried out in the pilot study but it will be carrying out with fewer participants that would be used for a wide-ranging of the research In this research, pilot test was directly interview to five people who are working in aviation industry

 A main survey has two methods to collect: face-to-face and online questionnaire survey In face-to-face method, the survey was handled by mean of hard copies of questionnaire These papers were distributed to employees who working in Tan Son Nhat International Airport Because of the geographical distance, the online questionnaire method was used The survey was collected via Google survey by sending

Figure 3.1 Research Process

3.2 Measurement Scale

The measurement scale applies in this research were adapted from other researcher 08 items based on Dorman & Zapf (2004) measured Customer verbal

27

aggression; 04 items based on Jaramillo et al., (2009) measured Turnover intention; 03 items based on Wilk and Moynihan’s (2005) measured Emotional exhaustion; Stress appraisal was measured by 04 items based on Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein,

R (1983); and Negative affectivity was measured by 06 items based on Watson and Watson et al., (1988)

Customer verbal aggression

To measure customer verbal aggression, the author used a scale of 08 items adopted and modified from the CSS scale (customer – related social stressors) developed

by Dorman & Zapf (2004) Five-point Likert scale from “1 = not at all true” to “5 = absolutely true” was used in this construct

CVA1 Customers often shout at us

Dorman & Zapf (2004)

CVA2 Customers personally attack us verbally

CVA3 Customers are often complaining about us

CVA4 Customers get angry with us even over minor matters

CVA5 Some customers argue all the time

CVA6 Customers vent their bad mood out on us

CVA7 The customers often criticize us – they never see what is well done

CVA8 If an error occurs, the customers often blame us - never themselves

Emotional exhaustion

The three-item scale for emotional exhaustion was modified from Wilk and Moynihan’s (2005) study In addition, the author used five-point Likert scale from “1 = strongly disagree” to “5 = strongly agree” to measure

EMO1 I feel burned out from my work

Wilk and Moynihan’s (2005)

EMO2 I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have to face another

day on the job

EMO3 I feel frustrated with my job

Turnover intention

28

For turnover intention, Jaramillo et al (2009) measure was used to measure the level of employee leaving decision This scale included four-item, and five-point Likert scale from “1 = strongly disagree” to “5 = strongly agree” was used to assess the turnover extent

TOI1 I do not think I will spend my entire career with this organization

Jaramillo et al (2009)

TOI2 I have decided to quit this organization

TOI3 I am looking at other jobs now

TOI4 If I do not get promoted soon, I will look for a job elsewhere

Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression

Four items, which were modified and adopted from the PSS (perceived stress scale) developed by Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R (1983), were used to measure stress appraisal Five-point Likert scale from “1 = never” to “5 = very often” was used to measure this construct

STRESS1 How often have you been angered because of things that were outside

of your control?

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R (1983)

STRESS2 How often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you

could not overcome them?

STRESS3 How often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your

The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS, Watson et al 1988) consists of 20-item mood scales and was developed to provide brief measures of PA and NA However, the survey only choose 6 items from both to positive and negative affectivity

to clearly understand the meaning of these characteristics

29

Respondents are asked to rate the extent to which they have experienced each particular affect within a specified time at work, with reference to a five-point Likert scale The scale points are “1 = very slightly or not at all” to “5 = very much” To appropriate with the circumstance of this research, the negative affectivity question will

be changed some words but still base on the scale

NEG1 Interested

Watson (1988) and Watson et al., (1988)

The meanings of six items are chosen in the questionnaire:

 Interested: wanting to give your attention to something and discover more aboutit/ relating to a person or group who has a connection with a particular situation,event, business, etc

 Enthusiastic: enthusiastic appreciation for something is more than just liking it –

it loves it/ having or showing great excitement and interest

 Inspired: being of such surpassing excellence as to suggest inspiration by thegods

 Distressed: describes a general feeling of unhappiness

 Irritable: easily irritated or annoyed/ abnormally sensitive to a stimulus/ capable

30

with five employees who are working as ground service staffs The in-depth interview would help the author finalize questions, which were easy for respondents to understand; further, it would be valuable in measuring observed variables before launching the main survey Based on the feedback of respondents, the survey questionnaires were clearer and more understandable

Moreover, the Likert scale was used for all items in this study The survey was prepared in English and then translated into Vietnamese by an academic fluent in both languages The minimum sample size needed for data analysis is 125 Therefore, for the survey, papers were distributed to 200 questionnaires directly and indirectly via Google survey to respondents The author designed this questionnaire into three parts The first section included demographic such as gender, age, education level, etc to classify respondents The second and third section helped the author to find out the ideas and thinking of respondents about customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, turnover intention, negative affectivity, and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression The multiple-choice answers were followed by Likert scale to use for items

in this research

3.1.1 Preliminary Qualitative Research

The scales of this research adopted from the authors in Western countries There were some differences about culture, economic development and the way to select the respondents A pilot study was used to conduct through qualitative research method The purpose is to gather information and adjust variables in these scales The pilot test conducted in Ho Chi Minh City at Tan Son Nhat Airport The results and feedbacks from the pilot test facilitate the researchers for the big scale of research or study, which

is conduct after the pilot test As the results, comments given from in-depth interview was used for adjustment of the measurement scales (Table 3.1)

In the first, the author directly interview people to double check all the factors and describe their meaning in the way that most everyone can understand exactly It is

31

an important step to decrease the error for the six hypotheses in this research The people were chosen to interview who are working in aviation industry as ground service employees They are in age from 18 to 25; the age group has the highest turnover rate

in aviation industry (Report of Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012) Moreover, the employers often concentrate in recruiting the employees in this age because their young and ability to stand the pressure from work Therefore, the author decided to choose this group to conduct the in-depth interview The author had to adjust and redesign the measurement scales, which borrowed from previous researchers to make it

be suitable for the topic of this study

The author based on the preliminary scale to create the first questionnaire to conduct the in-depth interview people who facing customers regularly Five people were interviewed and their opinions or suggestions about the scale help the author to improve and build the final questionnaire Some questions were advised to change some words

or meaning, even change another questions more appropriate According to the author, these advices are matching with their job and understanding of the interviewees Therefore, the questionnaire was redesigned and structured into three parts The first parts was to classify demographic data such as gender, age, education The second and third main parts contain the question about the customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, negative affectivity, stress appraisal, and turnover intention Nevertheless, the questionnaire based on the scale from the Western authors, it was written in English while the study was carried out within Vietnam with Vietnamese people, so, before giving to the respondents, the author translated it into Vietnamese

32

Table 3.1 In-depth Interview Respondents’ Information

The respondents Draft measurement

Final measurement scales Customer verbal aggression

Nguyễn Văn Hiên – 21

years old (Jetstar

However, the customers “often”

criticized them, not

“always”, and they argue them without seeing their trying better

The customers often criticize us – they never see what is well done

Emotional exhaustion

Huỳnh Minh Hải – 24

years old (Vietnam

Airlines)

I feel tired at work

The interviewee recommended the researcher should change the sentence by more details to make this item more understandable

I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job

Almost the respondents did not understand the meaning of this item

Deleted

Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression