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 CITYInternational School of Business ---Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER INT

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

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 NguyenThi Mai Trang, and Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan as proposal examination committee.Their comments and meaningful suggestions significantly contribute to this researchcompletion

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

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

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

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

emotional exhaustion, turnover intention

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

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

1.1 Research Background

1.1.1 About Vietnam Civil Aviation

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

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

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 to12.6%, compared with 2013) In the period 2010 - 2014, the average growth rate ofpassenger transport and freight transport respectively reached 12.4% and 14.6%.Located in the region of Southeast Asia, Vietnam market witnessed strong demandgrowth in operating passenger transport and freight, to promote the development ofaviation According to the project "Master plan for Vietnam tourism development to

2020 and vision to 2030", by 2020, Vietnam will attract 10,5 million internationalpassengers, attend to 47.5 million domestic arrivals; by 2030, Vietnam will attract 18million international tourists and 71 million domestic visitors In 2020, the totalrevenue 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% inrevenue and 20% of passenger traffic

1.1.2 Aviation Labor Structure

Along with the renewal of equipment is the progress on the managementcapacity, professional skills, quality of service, and service style of management staff,technicians, air traffic control, flight attendances, ground service staff, etc They arebasic training or advanced training in domestic and foreign operations The process ofintegration and the development requires the mobilization and use of force is the totalresources, including in particular internal factors In the internal factors, the humanfactor is the decisive factor in the development of strong and sustainable, ensuringcompetitiveness in the future Therefore, Vietnam aviation industry has focused thework of planning, training, and retraining of staff and workers under the program toreach international standards In addition to the academic programs in the country,groups of airports was contracted trained, sent staff officers to study abroad, haveaccess to and learn technology, advanced science, apparel services unit

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

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 listedbelow:

- 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%)

Figure 1.2 Vietnam aviation educational labor standards

(Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012)

Unskilled workers Postgraduate

Primary and

technical workers

University 30%

42%

Intermediate 20%

It was found that the most education level of aviation employees is university withhigh 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 Althoughthe quality employees is increasing, aviation labor shortage still occurs and it isconsidered a difficult problem for the managers As of now, the units, organizations, orcompanies operating in the sector of civil aviation recruit thousands of employees eachyear 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 toCivil Aviation Authority of Vietnam in the last few years, the turnover rate ranged fromthe 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 AviationAuthority of Vietnam (2012), ground service staff is a part of air traffic and one of thesectors has high turnover rate The airlines recruit ground service staff twice each yearbecause of the shortage of employees compared to the operation

scale of the civil aviation sector is growing This is really a concern of managers forthe stable operation of civil aviation sector.

1.2 Research Problem

The employees’ turnover rate or the employees who change jobs are increase; themorale and productivity of other employees are affected At the same time, the units offield take many times and money for recruiting and training the new employees There aremany reasons why the employees leave: low salaries, overworked, lack of motivation,lack of training, or lack of reward and recognition, etc One of the reasons that more andmore appear recently, impact to the psychological of customer service employees is thecustomer verbal aggression It not only makes the employees feel tension, but also theyare not motivated to continue their job Aquino – Nemecek, a director of the UnitedAirlines Red Carpet Club in Los Angeles, said, “Working in the customer servicesdepartment for an airline is “the worst place to work” as there is not a day that goes bywithout a passenger complaining Customers want the airline employees to listen towhatever is irritating them Sometimes, passenger rude behavior is just too much Theypush; even hit the airline staff when they feel angry”

According to specific tasks such as ground service staff, capable of frequentexposure to different passengers coming from different countries require the staffs moreknowledge and skills with the best and professional service style The pressure from workrequirements and customer satisfaction make aviation employees depressed In particular,the passengers who have bad attitudes with verbal aggression will cause the hurt to theself-esteem of employees The customers use heavy words to criticize or even insult theaviation employees take place more and more These cause negative affectivity such asdistressed, irritable or upset for the staffs; they will have bad mood and no motivation intheir 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 7millions VNĐ because of hitting one-man aviation staff The reason for this action was thewoman 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

asked him to check the identity card Many articles appeared in the newspaper toreport the assault of customer to employees Mr Lai Xuan Thanh, Director of VietnamCivil Aviation Authority said, “In the first 6 months of 2015, the transport ofpassengers by airplanes was approximately 30 millions Also during this period, therewas 41 incident of safety, aviation security While technical problems reduced, theincidents involving humans have increased sharply More and more incidentshappened 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” Thepressures from high requirement of the job, coupled with pressure from customersmake employees feel stress Since then, they decide to leave the organization and findanother job, which make them feel better

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

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

“The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotionregulation 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, emotionalexhaustion, 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 isconsidered a major source of stress for service workers However, only very few studieshave attempted to investigate the buffering role of organizational or personal resourcesagainst the negative influence of being subjected to frequently abusive and hostilebehavior from customers Additionally, these studies are focus on the call center

employees, hotel employees or general service employees (including airlinesemployees) The domestic and overseas researches about customer verbal aggression

to ground service staffs in aviation are rare to find out The majority studies aboutaviation employees in Vietnam mention about the factors to affect the turnover rate arefrom organization, not from customers

From these facts, the study is conducted to clarify the effects of customer verbalaggression to emotional exhaustion and turnover intention of ground service staff inVietnam 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?

- Is there a significant effect of employee emotional exhaustion on turnover intention?

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

aggression on turnover intention?

1.4 Research Methodology and Scope

Research Methodology

The research method combines qualitative and quantitative research; it helpsdevelop the accuracy and sufficiency of the research Qualitative research collects theideas and opinions allow the adjustment of the study is made While quantitative researchguarantees many people take the survey and allow the author to carry out the data analysiswith more reliable results Statistical Package for the Social Science software (SPSS) andAnalysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) are the effective tools to analyze the data; they areused in the data analysis chapter The steps are to test the reliability of the scales(Cronbach’s Alpha), Exploratory Factor Analysis Finally, the CFA is used to test thevalidity, while SEM is used to examine the hypothesized model

Research Scope

This study is to research the impact of customer verbal aggression to theemotional exhaustion and turnover intention in aviation industry, especially in groundservice staff The survey will be conducted only through Facebook Messenger anddirectly deliver to aviation employees in Vietnam only Due to limited time, theresearcher only focuses on two main kinds of service staff are check-in agent andpassenger 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 questionnairesurvey will sent by Facebook Messenger because of the distance In Ho Chi MinhCity, the paper survey will be directly delivered to employees in Tan Son NhatInternational 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

decision to quit job of ground service employees Based on those, the organization aswell as the managers has more detail vision about the popular problem nowadays.Additionally, they can understand factors to relate with customer verbal aggression asnegative affectivity and stress appraisal Since then, the managers will have solutions

to retain their employees and reduce the bullying situation of passengers to aviationemployees

On the other hand, this research is also vital for appropriate policyimplementation as issue the punishment of cursing, assaulting, and threateningaviation employees By having a good understanding about factors that have influence

of customer verbal aggression on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention, thegovernment 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 researchsignificance

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypotheses

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

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Research process, measurement scales, questionnaire design, data collectionmethod, sampling design, and data analysis method are presented more details in thischapter

Chapter 4: Data Analysis

This chapter expresses all research results of the study This is the mostimportant part of the research including Sample Descriptive Statistic, ReliabilityAnalysis, Exploratory Factors Analysis, CFA, and SEM The discussion is alsorepresented in this chapter after having the results.

Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implication, and Limitation

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

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter mainly introduces the theories, which are proposed by manyscholars in academic field and are related to all the concepts and research model Atfirst, the author introduces the definition of customer verbal aggression and turnoverintention Next, the previous research of these concepts and their related discussion arementioned Finally, based on these theories and the relation of previous research, thehypotheses 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; betweenfirms, 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 ofmembers who have left an organization during the period being considered divided by theaverage number of people in that organization during the period Frequently, managersrefer to turnover as the entire process associated with filling a vacancy

Sut and Chad (2011) indicated that employee turnover is cause of economiclosses of organization It reduces greatly the job efficiency Similarly, Barak et al., (2001)suggested that employee turnover is terror and costly, it reduces organizationaleffectiveness and employee productivity to a certain extent, and manager must spend moreenergy 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 turnovercould be divided to involuntary or voluntary The most reasons for turnover can be eithervoluntary or involuntary Voluntary turnover occurs when an employee wants to leave andeventually decides to leave organization with variety causes It is likely the employeeaccepted a position, which has a better treatment whether physical, or spiritual cares and itwill be negative impact on the organization Another situation, an employee asked to leavethe organization for a variety of reasons including layoffs, poor job

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 ofleave relates strongly to voluntary turnover According to Price (1997), he suggestedthat most organizational research of turnover is voluntary quits Basically, theresearchers concentrate to research on employee turnover intention due to the data ofemployees who leaving voluntarily is difficult to collect (Currivan, 2000; Price, 1997).

Many scholars defined that turnover intention is the single best predictor ofturnover and as a key element in study employee behavior, and be the last step beforethe 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 meanthat employee has intent to stay with organizations, which have a positive effect tovoluntary turnover (Griffeth et al 2000) Finally, turnover intentions havesubstantiated of employee turnover to be robust accept from the most of scholars (Leeand Bruvold, as cited in Roberts et al., 1999)

Therefore, what the definition about employee turnover intention is Someresearchers defined that employee turnover intention is like a time - consuming processfrom 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 theworkplace is associated positively with dissatisfaction with the source of the messageand 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 customerperceptions of service value Unfriendly or aggression directed towards employees inservice organizations is a pervasive and growing problem (Grandey et al., 2004)

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

words, tone, or manner such as swearing, yelling, and sarcasm (Dormann & Zapf,2004; Grandey, Dickter, & Sin, 2004).

Human service employees are generally required to ‘serve with a smile’.Although the work role of many service providers may create a chronic need toregulate emotions in order to comply with organizational demand, anger-provokingevents clearly, increase this need since true emotions would have to be suppressed inorder to comply with job demand (Grandey, 2000) One dominant type of anger-provoking event reported by human service employees refers to customers’ aggressivebehavior during service transactions (Grandey et al 2002) Verbal abuse fromcustomers is not a rare occurrence For instance, the majority of airline employeesreported that they experienced verbal abuse at least once a month (Boyd 2002)

2.1.1.3 Employee Emotional Exhaustion

Before describing the theories of emotional exhaustion, first need to understandwhat is the emotion Crow LD and Crow A (1991) defines emotion as a state of turmoil onthe individual that serves as an inner adjustment (adjustment from inside) to theenvironment to achieve individual well-being and safety Emotions sometimes departfrom the anger, sadness, fear, pleasure, love, surprise, annoyance, and embarrassment

Emotional exhaustion is part of a three-dimensional burnout: the emotionalexhaustion, depersonalization, and low self-esteem (Maslach, 1993) According toMaslach (1993), people experiencing emotional exhaustion is characterized by thedepletion of emotional resources, such as feelings of frustration, despair, sadness,helplessness, depression, apathy toward work and feels shackled by tasks in the work sothat a person feels unable to provide psychological services Emotional exhaustion arisesbecause someone is working too intense, dedicated and committed, working too much andtoo long first, and looking at their needs and desires as the second This causes them tofeel the pressure to give more This pressure can come from within themselves, fromaviation employees in need Given these pressures, it can cause a sense of guilt, which inturn encourages them to add more energy When reality does not support their ideals, theystill struggle to achieve these ideals themselves until they drained resources, thus

experiencing fatigue or frustration caused by obstruction of the achievement of theexpectation (Farber, 1991).

On the other hand, Wisegeek website defines that emotional exhaustion is acondition that results from an excessive amount of stress When suffering from thiscondition, which may also be referred to as emotional depletion or burnout, a persontends to feel as if their inner resources have not been drained This condition can havepsychological, physical, and social effects It generally does not require medicalintervention unless more severe problems In most cases, a person can recover if hetakes a vacation, gets rest, or eliminates the cause of stress If a person becomesoverburdened with stress, there is a possibility that he or she will suffer fromemotional depletion This condition makes a person feel as though he or she does nothave the necessary emotional and physical resources to meet the demands in their life.Psychological effects may include irritability, anxiety, and frustration A sufferer mayadditionally experience varying degrees of fatigue, but it is possible that he/she willsuffer from insomnia There is a possibility that emotional depletion can lead toserious conditions, such as depression and gastrointestinal problems

There is not an accurate means to determine how much stress will result inemotional exhaustion Stress tolerance can greatly vary from one person to another It

is believed, however, that individuals with strong coping skills are more capable ofenduring greater amounts of stress and therefore less likely to suffer from emotionalexhaustion

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 abroad range of negative feelings such as worry, anxiety, self-criticisms, and a negativeself-view” (Keogh & Reidy, 2000, p 108) Watson and Clark (1984) defined negativeaffectivity (NA) as a higher-order personality variable describing the extent to which

an individual experiences, either in terms of frequency or intensity, high levels ofdistressing emotions such as anger, hostility, fear, and anxiety Studies contrasting

individuals high and low on negative affectivity (low and high NA individuals) showthat the latter experience negative moods and emotions across situations, regardless ofthe specific stimulus (Watson & Clark, 1984) High NA people also tend to focus onthe 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 andindividualistic 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 ofhostile, 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 interpretslightly 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 NApersons 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 bywhich individuals evaluate and cope with a stressful event Stress appraisal theory isconcerned 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 forcoping There are two types of appraisal: primary and secondary In primary appraisal, aperson seeks answers as to the meaning of the situation with regard to their well-being Aperson can appraise it as irrelevant, benign-positive or stressful If perceived as stressfulthen appraisal takes any of three forms i.e harm-loss, threat, or challenge The secondaryappraisal includes evaluation of one’s resources and whether situation can be handled ornot (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, Delongis & Gruen, 1986)

2.1.2 Review of previous studies

Prior to undertaking this research about the popular customer behavior toaviation employees, it was important to understand outcomes from previous studies.The customer verbal aggression research usually concentrates on the serviceemployees such as call center employees, hotel employees or general serviceemployees (including airlines employees) About the thesis in aviation industry, theymainly 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, theauthor still refers the previous studies about customer verbal aggression, emotionalexhaustion, and turnover intention to develop the model for this research

 In “The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotionregulation of service employees” (Alicia A Grandey, David N Dickter, and Hock-PengSin, 2004), these authors argued that work aggression or anger has typically focused onsupervisors and co-workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressivecustomers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employees Studyparticipants were customer service associates who worked full-time and had long tenureswith 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 spacesurrounded by other employees The authors explore the aggressive customers’

phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees The employees reported thatcustomer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, through this varied byrace and negative affectivity By using LISREL method, their data indicated thatcustomer verbal aggression and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggressionpositively related to emotional exhaustion

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

management However, research concerning employee emotions during customerinteractions is lacking This study examined the influence of customer verbalaggression on the emotional exhaustion of call center employees and resultant turnoverintention stemming from the conversation of resource theory The results extend thePrice – Mueller turnover model and explain how a team climate of organizationalsupport can affect employee emotions.

 In “The mediating role of organizational commitment betweenemotional 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 dependentvariable turnover intention For this purpose, data was obtained from 133 respondents

to check the relationship between variables The results of the entire study show thatthere is a significant relationship between dependent variable turnover intention andindependent 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 beingstressful or threatening (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), typically accompanied by a negativeemotion (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 Inaddition, appraisal is an evaluation of the significance of what is going on between theperson and the environment in terms of that person’s well being

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

habituation to the negative stimuli However, people seem to be hard-wired to reactstrongly to such potentially threatening events Therefore, we expected that a higher ofverbally aggressive customer is likely to be associated with a stronger appraisal ofthreat 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 negativeside 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 beingprone 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 negativeaffect have been tested for aggression – enhancing effects, it is clear that some of themare quite capable of increasing aggression

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

affectivity persons evoke more aggression from a customer (Buss, 1987) Similarly,someone high in negative affectivity has fewer coping resources and thus may perceivethe event as more threatening (Spector et al., 2000) Therefore, negative affectivitycorresponds with both the reported customer verbal aggression and stress appraisal ofcustomer 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 emotionalresources caused by excessive psychological demands (Boles et al., 2000) Theconversation of resources theory states that resource loss is disproportionately moresalient than resource gain (Hobfoll and Shirom, 2001) In response to customerdemands, frontline employees in the service industry use their scare resources, such asemotion, with an expectation that they will receive positive outcomes in return.However, they are routinely faced with customer aggression These unpleasantexperiences with customers deplete their emotional resources and prevent employeesfrom engaging in further mastery activities that help restore energy and positivefeelings Therefore, service employees are especially susceptible to emotionalexhaustion because when confronted with these stressors, employees have to makeextra 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 emotionalexhaustion Customer verbal aggression gives rise to emotional exhaustion (Grandey etal., 2004), which is the core dimension of burnout and refers to the lack of energy anddepletion of emotional resources due to excessive psychological demands

Stress emotions have a unique effect on health and organizational outcomesbeyond the frequency of work aggression (Schat & Kelloway, 2000), and thus mayexplain 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 stressappraisal of the situation induces a strong state of emotional and physiological arousal.The model focuses on the extent that employees feel threatened by customer verbalaggression (stress appraisal), while emotional exhaustion represented psychologicaland 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 Quarrelingwith customers could result in customer complaint, poor performance reviews, andsanctions from management As a result, service workers are restrained to problemsolving, escape-avoidance, and support-seeking strategies to cope with customeraggression (Skinner et al., 2003) Specifically, escape-avoidance strategies involvewithdrawing from a chaotic situation This seems to be a common response, as many havedocumented how workers seek to protect themselves from further damage (Cole andBedeian, 2007; Halbesleben, 2006) According to the conversation of resources theory,excessive demands and/or insufficient resources within a particular role domain orbetween domains can result in negative affective and dysfunctional behaviors (Shaffer etal., 2001) Verbal abuse from customers elicits frequent and strong emotional reactionsfrom service employees, because these negative events typically evoke strong and quickphysiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses (Taylor,

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 behavioralconsequences of customer aggression However, limited empirical evidence providessupport 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 emotionalexhaustion are more likely to see their individual performance weaken and decreasetheir resources to respond to job demands, thereby provoking higher levels ofemotional exhaustion and consequently affecting performance Employeesexperiencing emotional exhaustion may evoke a turnover reaction to cope with thestatus (Yavas et al., 2008; Sawyerr et al., 2009) Thus, employees experiencing highlevels of emotional exhaustion should be more likely to leave their organizations Inaddition, researches of Hoonakker et al., (2004), Korunka et al (2008) showed thatemotional 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 receivedconsiderable attention in the past decade Stress affects organizations by increasingabsenteeism, decreasing commitment to work and increasing staff-turnover (Leka &Cox, 2008) According to Price (2004), work stress was viewed as the extent to whichjob duties cannot be fulfilled and was hypothesized to impact negatively on intent tostay through satisfaction and commitment Observation on previous studies (Walsh,2011) showed that turnover intention commonly employed as dependent variablewhile using stressors as the independent variables

H4c: There is a positive impact of Stress appraisal of customer verbal

aggression on Turnover intention.

H3b+

H2b+

Stress appraisal of Customer verbal aggression

H4c+

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

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.

H4c: There is a positive impact of Stress appraisal if customer verbal aggression

on Turnover intention.

In summary, this chapter presents literature review relating to concept of customerverbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention Based on theseliteratures, a research model with eight hypotheses is identified to illustrate the impact

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

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

All procedures in this chapter, including qualitative and quantitative research, aredescribed The qualitative study involves in-depth interview, is used to modify and refinethe measures In order to evaluate the model and hypothesis, the study will adopt thequantitative 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 measurementscales: negative affectivity, frequency customer verbal aggression, stress appraisal ofcustomer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention The draftquestions were translated from English into Vietnamese The research design includedtwo phase: a pilot research and a main survey

 Pilot research: Pilot test is a minor sort of a larger study, which is piloted toformulate for the study or research (Zikmund, 2003) A pilot study implicates that thepretesting of a research tool such like a new data collection technique To test thefeasibility, equipment, and methods, researchers will frequently use a pilot study, asmall-scale trial of the larger research design (Rowan, 2011) Moreover, the entireresearch is carried out in the pilot study but it will be carrying out with fewerparticipants 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 questionnairesurvey In face-to-face method, the survey was handled by mean of hard copies ofquestionnaire These papers were distributed to employees who working in Tan Son NhatInternational Airport Because of the geographical distance, the online questionnairemethod was used The survey was collected via Google survey by sending

the link to Facebook friends who are working in Noi Bai International Airport and DaNang International Airport.

SPSS 20 and Amos 20 were used to test the model The procedure analyzingthe data collected included test of reliability with Cronbach’s Alpha, ExploratoryFactor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural EquationModeling (SEM) test

Cronbach’s Alpha Testing

Cronbach alpha Testing item – total correlation

SEM

Testing Structural equation

modeling Testing Boostrap

Research model and Hypotheses

Draft measurement scale

3.2 Measurement Scale

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

aggression; 04 items based on Jaramillo et al., (2009) measured Turnover intention; 03items based on Wilk and Moynihan’s (2005) measured Emotional exhaustion; Stressappraisal 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 andWatson et al., (1988)

Customer verbal aggression

To measure customer verbal aggression, the author used a scale of 08 itemsadopted 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.

CVA2 Customers personally attack us verbally.

(2004)

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 andMoynihan’s (2005) study In addition, the author used five-point Likert scale from “1

= strongly disagree” to “5 = strongly agree” to measure.

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

EMO3 I feel frustrated with my job

Turnover intention

For turnover intention, Jaramillo et al (2009) measure was used to measurethe level of employee leaving decision This scale included four-item, and five-pointLikert 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.

(2009)

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 stressscale) developed by Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R (1983), were used tomeasure 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

STRESS2 How often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you Kamarck, T., &

could not overcome them?

Mermelstein, R STRESS3 How often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your (1983)

The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS, Watson et al 1988) consists of20-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

Respondents are asked to rate the extent to which they have experienced eachparticular affect within a specified time at work, with reference to a five-point Likertscale 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.

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 the gods

 Distressed: describes a general feeling of unhappiness

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

29

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

Moreover, the Likert scale was used for all items in this study The survey wasprepared in English and then translated into Vietnamese by an academic fluent in bothlanguages The minimum sample size needed for data analysis is 125 Therefore, forthe survey, papers were distributed to 200 questionnaires directly and indirectly viaGoogle survey to respondents The author designed this questionnaire into three parts.The first section included demographic such as gender, age, education level, etc toclassify respondents The second and third section helped the author to find out theideas and thinking of respondents about customer verbal aggression, emotionalexhaustion, turnover intention, negative affectivity, and stress appraisal of customerverbal aggression The multiple-choice answers were followed by Likert scale to usefor 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 toselect the respondents A pilot study was used to conduct through qualitative researchmethod The purpose is to gather information and adjust variables in these scales Thepilot test conducted in Ho Chi Minh City at Tan Son Nhat Airport The results andfeedbacks from the pilot test facilitate the researchers for the big scale of research orstudy, 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 factorsand describe their meaning in the way that most everyone can understand exactly It is

an important step to decrease the error for the six hypotheses in this research Thepeople were chosen to interview who are working in aviation industry as groundservice employees They are in age from 18 to 25; the age group has the highestturnover rate in aviation industry (Report of Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam,2012) Moreover, the employers often concentrate in recruiting the employees in thisage because their young and ability to stand the pressure from work Therefore, theauthor decided to choose this group to conduct the in-depth interview The author had

to adjust and redesign the measurement scales, which borrowed from previousresearchers to make it be suitable for the topic of this study

The author based on the preliminary scale to create the first questionnaire toconduct the in-depth interview people who facing customers regularly Five people wereinterviewed and their opinions or suggestions about the scale help the author to improveand build the final questionnaire Some questions were advised to change some words ormeaning, even change another questions more appropriate According to the author, theseadvices are matching with their job and understanding of the interviewees Therefore, thequestionnaire was redesigned and structured into three parts The first parts was to classifydemographic data such as gender, age, education The second and third main parts containthe question about the customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, negativeaffectivity, stress appraisal, and turnover intention Nevertheless, the questionnaire based

on the scale from the Western authors, it was written in English while the study wascarried out within Vietnam with Vietnamese people, so, before giving to the respondents,the author translated it into Vietnamese

Table 3.1 In-depth Interview Respondents’ Information

The respondents Draft measurement Comments Final measurement

Customer verbal aggression

All respondents said that they understood

However, the

“always”, and they (Jetstar Pacific)

argue them without seeing their trying better.

Emotional exhaustion

The interviewee recommended the

change the sentence by get up in the morning years old (Vietnam I feel tired at work

25 years old (Vietnam I intend to leave this Almost the respondents

Trương Trần Ngọc Anh short period of time

meaning of this item.

– 25 years old (Vietjet

Air)

Stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression