“Why you?!”: An attribution perspective on third-party employees’ unfavorable reactions to observed customer mistreatment

Abstract

By integrating the belief in a just world (BJW) theory into the covariation model, we developed an integrated moderated mediation model to elucidate the boundary conditions and attribution processes by which observed customer mistreatment precipitates unfavorable reactions from third-party employees. We collected time-lagged data in three stages and obtained 346 valid questionnaires from hospitality industry employees. Results revealed that third-party employees typically attribute blame to both victims and perpetrators. However, when the level of experienced customer mistreatment is high, they are more inclined to attribute blame and impose punishment on perpetrators. Conversely, when experienced mistreatment was sufficiently low, they were more prone to assigning blame and consequently causing secondary harm to the victims, aligning with the BJW theory.