IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v206y2026ics0148296325007830.html

A meta-analytic model of the influence of customer mistreatment on employees’ work outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Tan, Hongjuan
  • Zhang, Yi
  • (Roy) Zhao, Xinyuan
  • Mattila, Anna S.
  • Yang, Huan

Abstract

Customer mistreatment (CM) significantly affects employees’ work outcomes. Drawing on cognitive–affective personality system theory, we conduct a meta-analysis of 232 independent samples from 202 primary studies (N = 76,957), elucidating three prominent mechanisms (i.e., cognition, affect, and resource depletion) through which CM negatively affects three core work outcomes (i.e., in-role, positive extra-role, and negative extra-role performance). Results show that integrating cognitive, affective, and resource mechanisms is essential for a comprehensive understanding of CM. When the three mechanisms are tested jointly, cognition and resource depletion remain significant across work outcomes, while affect remains significant only for negative extra-role performance. CM primarily impairs in-role and positive extra-role performance through cognition and drives negative extra-role performance through affect. Certain factors (e.g., public vs. private contexts, gender) moderate these relationships. These findings advance the understanding of CM and offer insights informing both customer service practice and future research agendas.

Suggested Citation

  • Tan, Hongjuan & Zhang, Yi & (Roy) Zhao, Xinyuan & Mattila, Anna S. & Yang, Huan, 2026. "A meta-analytic model of the influence of customer mistreatment on employees’ work outcomes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:206:y:2026:i:c:s0148296325007830
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115960
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325007830
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115960?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:206:y:2026:i:c:s0148296325007830. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.