Not Just Good, but Fair Service: The Mediating Role of Psychological Contract Breach between Service Quality and Behavioral Outcomes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Understanding tourist expectations is vital for hospitality and tourism businesses to prepare for a psychological contract breach. Prior research has widely evidenced the roles of psychological contract breach predominantly between the company (i.e., organization) and employee (i.e., service provider). Nevertheless, the psychological contract between the service provider and the customer/consumer (service receiver) (e.g., tourist) has been neglected. Therefore, the current study presents how the psychological contract breach of perceived service quality of tourists influences their satisfaction and positive word of mouth. The current study further tests the boundary conditions (i.e., moderation), roles of travel purpose and the number of hotels’ stars. The study used a survey method for tourists visiting Macao. The results (n = 253) indicate that psychological contract breach mediated the relationship between perceived service quality, visitor satisfaction and positive word of mouth. Further, drawing upon the social information-seeking behavior as a baseline, the study results show that leisure tourists tend to be more sensitive to their psychological contract breach perception than non-leisure tourists.