The Moderating Effect of Customers' Willingness to Participate in Service Recovery and its Impacting Factors - An Empirical Analysis

Prior research cites customer participation in service recovery (CPSR) as a meaningful strategy to ensure post-recovery satisfaction or repurchase intentions. However, recent studies raise doubts about the generalizability of its unconditional positive effect, suggesting the presence of moderating factors. With an explorative, qualitative study, this article considers customer participation willingness in service recovery as moderator. It also identifies six factors likely influencing customers’ willingness to participate in recovery and in turn affecting the strength and valence of the relationship between CPSR and post-recovery evaluations. For example, by changing customer participation willingness in service recovery, the factors of responsibility for a third person and domain-specific expertise influence the strength of this underlying relation; the possibility to influence the recovery result even may flip its valence. These results offer new insights for managers to assess situations in which CPSR is likely to be appropriate and thus to create more effective service recovery processes.