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This study explores the impact of customer incivility on kitchen staff's emotional exhaustion, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions, with a focus on moral disengagement effects.

May 29, 2026Open Access

Customer Incivility Spillover into Kitchen Staff Deviance and Withdrawal in Multigenerational Workplaces: The Moderating Function of Moral Disengagement

Key Points

This study explores the impact of customer incivility on kitchen staff's emotional exhaustion, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions, with a focus on moral disengagement effects.
Data collected from 300 kitchen staff at four- and five-star hotels in Hurghada, Egypt.
Developed a moderated mediation model using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).
Examined direct and indirect relationships between customer incivility, emotional exhaustion, workplace deviance, turnover intentions, and moral disengagement.
Customer incivility positively affects emotional exhaustion (p < 0.05).
Emotional exhaustion partially mediates the effects of customer incivility on both workplace deviance and turnover intentions.
Moral disengagement strengthens the relationship between emotional exhaustion and both workplace deviance and turnover intentions, especially in long-tenured employees.

Abstract

The study aimed to examine how customer incivility (CI) spills over into workplace deviance (WD) and turnover intentions (TI) among Egyptian hotel kitchen staff through the mediating mechanism of emotional exhaustion (EE), while also assessing the moderating role of moral disengagement (MD). Specifically, the study sought to (1) investigate the impact of CI on EE; (2) examine whether EE mediates the relationships between CI and both WD and TI; and (3) test whether MD strengthens the effects of EE on WD and TI. The study’s theoretical foundations were anchored in the conservation of resources (COR) theory and social cognitive theory (SCT). We developed a moderated mediation model and tested it using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique based on data collected from 300 kitchen staff at four- and five-star hotels in Hurghada, Egypt. Findings demonstrated that CI had a positive effect on EE, and that further EE affects WD and TI. EE partially mediates the relationships between CI and these two model outcomes (WD and TI). Furthermore, MD moderates the relationships between EE and both WD and TI, such that these positive effects are amplified among employees with higher levels of MD. Multi-group analysis further indicates that the moderating effect of MD on the EE–deviance relationship is stronger for long-tenure employees. These findings extend COR theory to back-of-house hospitality populations and integrate SCT’s moral detachment framework to explain heterogeneous employee responses to emotional depletion. Theoretical contributions, practical implications for hotel management, and directions for future research are discussed.

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