Belief, forgiveness and karma: unpacking customer incivility following service failures

Purpose This study aims to examine the association between religious belief and customer incivility following a service failure. It examines lower situational interpersonal forgiveness toward frontline employees as an indirect pathway and investigates belief in karma as a boundary condition for this relationship. Design/methodology/approach Three studies examined the proposed model in service-failure contexts. Studies 1 (n = 202) and 2 (n = 279) used restaurant and hotel scenarios, respectively, to examine the indirect association involving religious belief and customer incivility intentions and the moderating role of belief in karma. Study 3 (n = 297) used a Prolific experiment that made karma-related action–consequence considerations salient. Mediation and moderated-mediation effects were tested using PROCESS with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Findings Across three studies, stronger religious belief was associated with intentions to engage in customer incivility, indirectly through lower situational interpersonal forgiveness toward the frontline employee. In Study 2, this indirect association was weaker among customers reporting stronger belief in karma. In Study 3, it was weaker when karma-related considerations were made situationally salient. Practical implications Following a service failure, organizations can state openly and for all customers, the standard of respectful conduct they expect, though such a statement complements the service recovery rather than replacing it. A statement of this kind should not invoke customers’ belief or restrict legitimate complaints and redress. Recovery should be prompt and fair, and designed to support customers’ willingness to forgive the frontline employee. The employee who bears the brunt of customer response needs clear escalation routes, supervisor support and training. Originality/value This research identifies religious belief as a customer-side, belief-based antecedent of customer incivility intentions in service failure contexts. It extends social norms theory by identifying lower situational interpersonal forgiveness toward the frontline employee as an indirect pathway linking religious belief with incivility intentions. It further identifies belief in karma as a boundary condition on this indirect association and shows that situationally salient karma-related considerations attenuate the pathway in an experimental setting. The research integrates religious psychology into research on service failure and customer incivility while limiting its claims to the specific beliefs, scenarios and intention-based outcomes examined.