How AI awareness can prompt service performance adaptivity and technologically-environmental mastery

Abstract

Despite the growing tourism research interest in artificial intelligence (AI) awareness, this research field largely focuses on the effects of AI awareness on employees’ work-related outcomes, with few studies considering how AI awareness can prompt their both work- and life-related outcomes. Drawing on the job crafting strategies, we argue that AI awareness can encourage employees to address challenges and opportunities by engaging in different job crafting (prevention-focused vs. promotion-focused pathways), importantly, which can have different implications for subsequent employee service performance adaptivity (work-related) and technologically-environmental mastery (life-related) for navigating the changing technological environment. Meanwhile, high (vs. low) level of servant leadership can strengthen the promotion-focused (prevention-focused) job crafting pathway. Our proposed model was tested with data obtained through a time-lagged three-wave survey (multi-level and multi-source designs) of 325 employees and 56 supervisors across 24 tourism and hospitality companies. This research further offers theoretical implications and practical indications.