An empirical study of the role of failure severity in service recovery evaluation in the context of the airline industry

Previous studies have found that perceived justice with service recovery dimensions (distributive, procedural, and interactional) are crucial factors influencing customers’ emotions after a service recovery effort. According to the service recovery literature, these post-recovery emotions represent an important determinant of satisfaction with service recovery and thus behavioral intentions. This study extends the literature by investigating the role of service failure severity within the existing framework of service recovery research. Data were collected through a survey of airline passengers who experienced a service failure and thus a service recovery effort in the past year. The results indicate that procedural justice and interactional justice had significant effects on post-recovery emotions, which in turn were significantly related to recovery satisfaction. In addition, the results provide partial support for the moderating effect of service failure severity. These results have important implications and suggest some interesting avenues for future research.