The Effect of Customer Uncivil Behavior on Counterproductive Work Behavior and Quit Intention of Airlines’ Frontline Employees: Emotional Intelligence as a Moderator

The main philosophy of most service-oriented organizations is ‘the customer is always right’. Organizational regulations ask employees to delight customer even in cases including customer uncivil behaviors, which in turn pay employees to show negative work outcomes. This research aims to examine the relationships between customer incivility, counterproductive work behavior (CWB) (e.g., verbal and physical abuse, withdrawal behaviors and production deviance) and intention to quit of frontline employees in airline industry. Furthermore, the moderating effect of emotional intelligence (EI) in the previous relationships is also examined. Using a structured questionnaire, a randomly sample of frontline employees working in airlines were invited to participate in this research. A total of 406 questionnaires were analyzed using smart PLS 3.21 for regression-based Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that customer incivility positively affects (CWB) and quitting intention of Egyptian frontline employees in airline industry. Moreover, it was found that emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between customer incivility and CWB. In addition, EI was also emerged as a moderator among customer incivility and intention to quit. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.