“Money is not everything, but without money, everything is nothing!” The detrimental impact of financial scarcity mindset on service innovation behavior among hospitality employees

Abstract

Drawing on the job demands–resources (JD-R) theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we investigate how and when the financial scarcity mindset among hospitality service employees influences their service innovation behavior. Utilizing a three-wave and two-source questionnaire survey method, we collected data from 471 frontline service employees and their supervisors at 18 upscale hotels located in the southeastern coastal region of China. Our findings reveal that the financial scarcity mindset triggers both cognition-focused rumination and affect-focused rumination among hospitality service employees. Both forms of rumination subsequently lead to the psychological depletion of service employees, which in turn inhibits their service innovation behavior. However, family support, as an external resource supplement, mitigates the impact of the financial scarcity mindset on both cognition-focused rumination and affect-focused rumination. This study offers a micro-level and nuanced perspective on the socio-economic structural challenges faced by low-income service employees in the hospitality industry. Furthermore, it advances our understanding of the psychology of money in hospitality management literature by elucidating the serial mediating mechanisms of rumination and depletion through which the financial scarcity mindset shapes service-related behaviors.