Employee emotional labour and quitting intentions: moderating effects of gender and age

Purpose - Service employees frequently engage in emotional labour to express emotions to customers that conform with organizational display rules. Previous studies report equivocal findings regarding the relationships among emotional labour, job satisfaction, and quitting intentions. This paper aims to shed additional light on the links by distinguishing two dimensions of emotional labour and predicting that job satisfaction mediates its relationship with quitting intentions, while gender and age moderate its relationship with job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach - Cross-sectional survey data from German service employees, entered into a structural equation model, test the study's hypotheses. Findings - Job satisfaction partially mediates relationships between emotional labour and quitting intentions. Deep acting positively affects the job satisfaction of male but not female service employees. The surface acting-job satisfaction link is negative for female but not male service employees. The deep acting-job satisfaction link also is stronger for younger than for older service workers. Research limitations/implications - Conservation of resources theory complements and extends previous service research focused on employee-related outcomes of emotional labour. Practical implications - The findings improve service managers' understanding of how employees' emotional labour drive job satisfaction and employee turnover. Originality/value - This study is the first to consider both gender and age as moderators that help explain employee quitting intentions, as well as the first to find a positive effect of deep and surface acting on quitting intentions.