The Moderated-Mediation Effect of Job Engagement and Psychological Capital Focus in the Relationship between Hotel Employees’ Family Incivility on and Workplace Well-being

Abstract

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this paper analyzes the impact of family incivility on hotel employees’ workplace well-being through the work-family resource model and discusses the mediating role of job engagement and the moderating role of psychological capital. Through collecting 382 valid questionnaires, the results show that: family incivility is significantly negatively correlated with employees’ workplace well-being. Job engagement plays a partial mediating role in the influence of family incivility on employees’ workplace well-being. Psychological capital plays a moderating role in the negative effect of family incivility on job engagement. Psychological capital moderates the indirect effect of family incivility on their workplace well-being through job engagement. In other words, when the psychological capital level of hotel employees is high, the negative impact of family incivility on workplace well-being through job engagement will be weakened. The conclusion of this study can not only expand the relevant literature on the work-family resource model of hotel human resource management in theory, and also provide a useful reference for the hotel to improve the service quality of staff in practice.

Keywords: Family incivility; Job engagement; Workplace well-being; Psychological capital.

Introduction

With the further deepening of economic globalization, the level of development of the tertiary sector has increasingly become an important indicator of the level of economic development of each country. The increasing pursuit of a better life makes service quality increasingly a core competence of a company. For example, Seabed's nanny service has helped it quickly build a business empire. The Four Seasons has been named one of the best hotel groups in the world by Travel+Leisure magazine and Zagat Guide and has become a global benchmark in the hotel industry. As an important part of the service industry, the quality of service provided by hotel staff determines customer satisfaction and even directly affects the survival of the hotel. From the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Promoting High-Quality Development", to the National Development and Reform Commission and the General Administration of Market Regulation formulating the "Guiding Opinions on High-Quality Development of Service Industry in the New Era", tasks should be deployed around the weak links and common problems that restrict the high-quality development of service industry, indicating that improving service quality has become a key part of China's high-quality development.

In the service industry, meeting the needs of customers and providing them with the best possible service is a fundamental requirement in the daily work of employees [1]. Service quality is closely related to employees' job engagement. It has been shown that employee behavior (job shaping, strengths utilization, fun job design), personal resources (self-efficacy, optimism, self-esteem, psychological capital), and work-family balance [2] all influence employees’ job engagement, and that different stressors have different effects on job engagement [3]. This is especially true for frontline hotel staff. Due to the special nature of their work, for example, the hotel receptionist needs to deal with all kinds of people and smile at all times, and pay attention to the customer's needs for facilities and amenities to provide timely service from the time the customer checks in to the time he or she checks out, which usually takes one night or even several days, hotel staff needs to devote more emotional and energetic resources to ensure a high level of job engagement compared to staff in other service industry situations. Due to this continuous and timely work characteristic, it tends to take up a lot of employees' time, especially the time that should belong to their families (because they cannot go home to their families because of night shifts), thus making it easier for hotel employees to be in a situation where it is difficult to balance family and career, and more prone to family incivility, which has an impact on employees' job engagement (such as bringing negative emotions from home to hotel service work), thus affecting service quality. Therefore, this paper argues that family incivility is a low-intensity transgression from a family context that is perceived by the company's employees as a violation of mutual respect among family members, which may arise from work-related reasons, family reasons, or from their own reasons, and the result of which can cause stress to the employees and thus have a negative impact on their work. Drawing on conservation of resource theory, this paper seeks to explore the mechanisms of influence and boundary effects between family incivility, job engagement, and workplace well-being among hotel employees.

Theoretical and Documentary Foundations

Conservation of Resource Theory

Conservation of Resource theory (COR) is often used as the main theory to describe how people cope with stress in their environment and how these encounters affect their well-being [4]. Hobfol divided resources into four categories: material resources (work), which are used to resist the stress; conditional resources (marital status, family relationships, etc.), which create the basis for core resources; personal traits such as psychological capital and emotional intelligence; and auxiliary energy resources (time) [5]. Current research on COR in China focuses on resource gains, versus losses, personal decision-making mechanisms, and female leadership [6]. This paper will use COR theory from external sources to explain the impact of psychological capital, workplace well-being, and job engagement of employees who suffer from uncivilized family behavior in the hotel industry, especially female employees.

Family Incivility

Family incivility is a new type of negative family behavior, which is transformed from uncivilized behavior in the workplace [7]. Lim and Tai [8] proposed that family incivility is low-intensity deviant behaviors that occur in the family background and are carried out by family members with ambiguous intentions and violate family respect norms. Because of its concealment and subtle influence, it has gradually attracted the attention of scholars. A few existing studies have shown that individuals who suffer from family incivility will feel the loss of family ties, causing a kind of emotional pressure and consumption, which will significantly affect employee's counterproductive behavior [9], workplace well-being [10], and service initiative [11]. According to the Work-Home Resource (W-HR) model [12], family incivility is an emotional need in the family domain. It causes an emotional drain that drains personal resources such as psychological capital and requires sustained physical or mental effort [13]. Neena [14] found that positive coping and self-efficacy can help counteract the negative impact of family incivility on job engagement through family work enrichment. However, domestic and foreign studies on work-family mostly focus on the intrusion of workplace factors on employees' family life [15], while ignoring the impact of family factors on employees' workplace behavior, especially in the field of hotel human resource management, which is still in a blank state.

Job Engagement

Job engagement is a reflection of employees' physical, cognitive and emotional self-values in an organization. It was first proposed by Kahn [16], developed in positive psychology, and has now become a hot spot in organizational behavior research. Schaufeli [17] divides job engagement into three dimensions: vitality, dedication, and focus. Vitality means that employees are energetic, have strong psychological capital and perseverance, and are willing to work hard. Dedication refers to the willingness of employees to choose to face up to job challenges when they arise. Focus means that an individual can fully devote himself to work, and can enjoy and immerse himself in the pleasant feeling that work brings to him. At present, the research of domestic and foreign scholars mostly focuses on the attributes of work itself, such as interpersonal relationships at work, characteristics of work itself, opportunities and rewards provided at work, quality of life, measures [18], work autonomy and skill diversity [19], and job role clarity, work challenge, contribution and management support, etc., all have a significant impact on job engagement. Stress and conflict, as a state of tension and anxiety, will consume too many emotional and physical, and mental resources, making employees unable to devote themselves to thinking or work. [20]. According to the conservation of resource theory, individual resources and energy are limited, and job engagement is a positive emotional and motivational state related to work. This positive emotional and motivational state can stimulate employees' enthusiasm for work, requiring individuals to devote a certain amount of resources and energy to accept work challenges and overcome work difficulties [21]. When employees have emotions such as tension and depression in a potentially harmful environment, there will be a state of incompatibility between their abilities and their sense of accomplishment at work. This feeling will increase the negative emotions of employees [22] and distract employees from their attention. It reduces the efficiency of employees in accepting and processing work, which may lead to low job engagement [23]. Studies have shown that family ties reduce personal energy, which in turn leads to negative behavioral outcomes in the workplace [24]. If there is a conflict between an employee's job and family, the employee will experience reduced job engagement [25]. For front-line hotel employees, not only are they faced with occupational stress factors such as high work pressure, complex interpersonal relationships, and fear of guest complaints, but hotel employees also face family stress factors such as life pressure, family affairs, and family responsibilities. These factors may lead to individual The increased degree of stress prompts individuals to experience emotional exhaustion and lose their motivation to provide quality services to customers. Therefore, this paper uses job engagement as an intermediary variable to explore the impact of family incivility on the job engagement of front-line hotel employees. In order to clarify the impact of family incivility on job engagement, this paper only considers the reduction of employees' job engagement due to family factors and does not consider the impact of unhappiness at work on employees' job engagement for the time being.

Psychological Capital

Psychological Capital (PsyCap) is a measure of an individual's positive ability. It was first introduced by Luthans and then extended to the field of organizational management. The most representative view is the "confidence, hope, resilience and optimism (HERO)" four-dimensional view [26], which shows the positive characteristics of psychological capital. It has been shown that psychological capital can predict positive perceptions, attitudes, and proactive behaviors, such as organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior [27-28]. Karatepe and Karadas [29] found that employees with high psychological capital are more satisfied with their jobs, careers, and lives because they are more optimistic, hopeful, resilient, and confident, so they can optimize for the extra load. In this sense, individuals with higher psychological capital tend to be more resilient in the face of stressful situations and difficulties [30], and are less affected by any negative emotions such as family incivility. In the hotel work environment, employees are more likely to be exposed to the pressure of family incivility due to factors such as long working hours. If the victim is burdened with family incivility for a long time, it will gradually drain the internal resources of the individual, and the continued lack of treatment and resolution may lead to negative work outcomes [10]. However, studies have shown that employee psychological capital can mitigate the negative effects of challenges and stressors on job burnout [31]. Employees with high psychological capital capacity tend to be optimistic that the situation will change positively [32], and also tend to have higher self-confidence and efficacy in the face of difficulties and adversity [33], which may motivate them to spend more effort to overcome the consequences of family incivility challenge. Studies by Tsaur [34] show that employees with high psychological capital ability will show positive behaviors, that is, employees with high psychological capital levels are more engaged in work when faced with challenging pressures, while employees with low psychological capital levels are less engaged. However, most previous research models use psychological capital as a predictor or mediator [35,36], and there is no research on the effects of self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism on positive work outcomes at the same time state. In addition to Darvish-motivate and Ali [37], Tsaur, Hsu and Lin [35], and Min [32] only studied psychological capital as a moderator variable. Therefore, the use of psychological capital as a moderator in this study can enrich the existing literature on hotel human resource management and further increase our understanding of psychological capital as a moderator of the relationship between occupational stress and front-line employee capital.

Workplace Well-being

Currently, academics are paying increasing attention to the evaluation of employees' emotions, and workplace well-being is a reflection of employees' emotions in the work domain, which is a positive cognitive evaluation and emotional experience resulting from employees' perception of the full realization of their individual potential in the work domain [38]. Domestic and international scholars' research on well-being has focused on three aspects: dimensional structure, measurement methods and influencing factors (job, organization, and individual).For example, it has been shown that at the work level, employees' workplace well-being depends on work environment resources (job role and job characteristics) [39], work and leisure [40], work-family conflict [3] and that leisure and low-stress work situations [41], work-family harmony [42] promote well-being; work-family conflict is negatively associated with workplace well-being [10]. At the organizational level, different leadership styles, leadership behaviors [43], sense of organizational justice [44], job trust, and workplace [45] also have an impact on workplace well-being, and this impact is far greater than that of work, colleagues, and family [46]. At the individual level, personality traits (optimism, vitality, preference for society) are easy to promote positive emotions and are positively correlated with happiness [47], and individual self-perception (positive communication, conflict management, etc.) [48] has a significant impact on workplace well-being. To sum up, due to the unequal work-leisure time, hotel employees are prone to family incivility, and their family behaviors may have a certain impact on the workplace well-being of hotel front-line service employees. Moreover, there are relatively few studies on the impact of family factors on workplace well-being. Therefore, this paper focuses on the impact mechanism of family incivility field on the workplace well-being of hotel employees and explores the mediating effect of job engagement and the moderating effect of psychological capital.

Research Hypothesis and Model Construction

Family Incivility and Workplace Well-being

Family incivility refers to the deviation of low intensity (irony, neglect) perceived from family members (such as parents, spouses, children, etc.), no clear injury motivation (no physical contact-cold violence), not easy to be observed but violates mutual respect between family members [24]. Because its behavior is mild, the injury intention is low and not easy to observe, but this biased family behavior is too small, which will eventually adversely affect the body and mind of employees, and then affect the workplace well-being. Workplace well-being is the individual's positive evaluation and emotional experience of all aspects of their current work, which is the result of employees' full job engagement [49]. Studies have shown that work environment resources [17], work and leisure [18], work and family conflict [3], etc. will affect workplace well-being, leisure and low-pressure work situation [19], work and family harmony [20] can promote happiness; In their study, Yang Ling et al [50] verified the negative correlation between work-family conflict and subjective well-being and obtained the conclusion that burnout and its dimensions play a partial mediating role in the influence of two sub-components of work-family conflict on subjective well-being. Therefore, we speculate that employees who experienced uncivilized family behavior may have reduced workplace well-being. From the perspective of resource preservation theory, the employees in the hotel service industry situation cannot well meet the needs of the family due to the limitations of time and energy, and the nature of their work is more likely to produce family incivility. Encounter family incivility of hotel staff is difficult to get a sense of belonging and happiness from the family, namely positive energy resources, employees in order to maintain the balance of their valuable resources, need to try to supplement resources from another environment, and increase the difficulty of the negative emotions energy employees from work, limit the staff flexible use of existing conditions and resources and flexible task ability, further affect the employees work smoothly and dynamic physical and mental state, make the self-value identity and satisfaction, employees workplace well-being. So this paper makes the following assumptions:

Hypothesis 1: Family incivility is negatively associated with workplace well-being.

The Mediation Effect of Job Engagement

Job engagement refers to employees with continuous, positive emotional work [51]. It has been shown that family constraints reduce personal energy, leading to negative behavioral outcomes in the work area [52], If there is a conflict between employees 'work and their families, their work investment will decrease, and if employees' work and family are in a healthy development state, then their job engagement will increase [53]. Hotel staff, not only face work pressure, complex interpersonal relationships, worry about guest complaints such as professional stress factors, and the hotel staff also face life pressure, family affairs, family responsibility, and family stress factors, these factors may lead to individual stress, thus affect the staff performance.

According to the theory of resource preservation, hotel staff needs to continuously invest positive emotions in the process of work, spend a lot of internal resources to meet the work needs, and need to find other supporting resources as much as possible from the side, so as to alleviate the negative impact of family incivility, so as to make up for the loss of their own resources. Therefore, we speculate that job engagement may be an intermediary path for employees to reduce workplace well-being. The positive emotional loss of hotel staff who encounters family incivility will, to some extent, improve the intrusion of input to work, and then damage their own valuable resources, reject work, and inhibit positive emotions (workplace well-being). So this paper makes the following assumptions:

Hypothesis 2: Job engagement plays an intermediary role in the impact of family incivility on employees' workplace well-being.

The Regulatory Effect of Psychological Capital

Luthans et al [54] believe that psychological capital is a state ability, which can not only improve people's awareness of their own resources but also improve work-related results and help employees better put into work [55]. It has been shown that psychological capital has a direct positive effect on work outcomes, such as job satisfaction [56,57]. In the hotel work environment, research shows that employees with high psychological capital ability will actively show positive behavior [35], more satisfied with their work, career, and life because they are more optimistic, hopeful, resilient, and confident, which leads them to optimize the extra load [43]. In this sense, individuals with higher psychological capital tend to be more resilient in the face of stressful environments and difficulties and are less affected by any negative effects, such as obstructive stressors. When exposed to stressors, individuals with high psychological capital also tend to be optimistic that things will change positively [58], which may motivate them to spend more effort to overcome the challenge; People with higher psychological capital respond to workplace stress by actively adapting to their environments and achieving success [59].

Thus, psychological capital produces positive emotions that individuals can use to adjust to their working status. Following this reasoning, we can hypothesize that individuals with high levels of psychological capital are less susceptible to the negative effects of family incivility and therefore tend to exhibit high job engagement [62]. On the other hand, people with lower levels of mental capital ability may doubt their abilities, and this pessimistic idea may reduce their willingness to participate in the work. For example, Min et al [32] found that employee psychological capital can alleviate the negative impact of challenges and hinder stressors on burnout, with high psychological capital levels having higher investment when facing challenges, and lower investment. Therefore, this study hypothesized that individuals with high psychological capital capacity tend to positively perceive challenge stressors and be more able to overcome negative inputs from family incivility and negative outcomes of workplace well-being than individuals with low psychological capital capacity. Accordingly, we make the following assumptions:

Hypothesis 3: Psychological capital plays a regulatory role in the negative role of family incivility on job engagement. In other words, when psychological capital is low, the negative relationship between family incivility and job engagement is enhanced; when psychological capital is high, the negative relationship between family incivility and job engagement decreases.

Regulatory Intermediary Effect

Since job engagement can guide the intermediary role between family incivility and workplace well-being, further analysis shows that psychological capital has a regulatory effect on the indirect relationship between family incivility and workplace well-being (i.e, a regulatory mediation role). Specifically, family incivility creates a negative psychological atmosphere for the hotel staff, which makes the employees, loses positive emotions, damages their individual psychological resources, presents a low job engagement, and the employees feel low workplace well-being. From the perspective of resource preservation theory, family incivility acts as a persistent stressor, which will enable individuals to perceive stress and be threatened with resource loss.

When individuals try to retain and acquire new resources to balance their own resources. The intensity of employees' psychological capital is an important source of balancing workplace well-being. When hotel staff faces resource loss from ongoing family misconduct, employees with a higher psychological capital index will offset the negative impact of family uncivilized on job engagement.

Thus, the indirect effect of job engagement to convey family incivility on workplace well-being may be weakened. Still can devote all your energy to work, Feel the value of your work. Psychological capital index low employees in dealing with family incivility, is unable to obtain effective supplement of resources, family incivility will make employees work continues to reduce, the individual need to invest twice or more resources to adjust working status to make up for the loss of resources, causing a new round of resources damage, staff valuable resources are exhausted, workplace well-being no longer exists. Accordingly, the paper makes the following assumptions:

Hypothesis 4: Psychological capital regulates the indirect effect of family incivility on their workplace well-being through job engagement, that is, when the psychological capital index of hotel employees is high, the negative impact of family incivility on workplace well-being through job engagement will be weakened.

Questionnaire Design and Data Collection

This study sample is from a questionnaire survey of 6-star hotels, including hotel employees who have experienced family incivility. Therefore, our whole sample was taken from hotel employees who have experienced different degrees of family incivility, and the interviewers included ordinary hotel staff and senior high school managers. First of all, we selected family incivility as the core variable from mature questionnaires. Since it came from foreign language literature, we translated it into Chinese with the help of tutors and other researchers and made appropriate corrections according to the Chinese situation, which significantly improved the accuracy of the questionnaire description. After that, several hotel employees were randomly selected to carry out the pre-survey. According to the feedback of the questionnaire according to the feedback of the questionnaire, the actual questionnaire was obtained for the survey. Finally, in the form of a questionnaire star, QQ, WeChat, and other social software are used to distribute to the social groups of hotels. At the same time, the interpersonal relationship of mentors can expand the distribution scope and fill in with one-to-one guidance. The official release period was from March 2021 to November 2021. A total of 411 questionnaires were collected, and 382 valid questionnaires were obtained after discrimination. The effective recovery rate was 92%, meeting the requirements of the number and quality of the questionnaire samples. After that, several hotel employees were randomly selected to carry out the pre-survey. According to the feedback of the questionnaire, the actual questionnaire was obtained for the survey. Finally, in the form of a questionnaire star, QQ, WeChat, and other social software are used to distribute to the social groups of hotels. At the same time, the interpersonal relationship of mentors can expand the distribution scope and fill in with one-to-one guidance. The official release period was from March 2021 to November 2021. A total of 411 questionnaires were collected, and 382 valid questionnaires were obtained after discrimination. The effective recovery rate was 92%, meeting the requirements of the number and quality of the questionnaire samples. Among these valid samples, women accounted for the majority, 67.02%, age, 25-35, 54.97%, and bachelor's degrees, accounting for 72.5%. Among the investigators, about 70% of the employees returned home less frequently due to work reasons, and said that they could not ask for leave on major festivals and weekends, which met the survey requirements of this study; In getting along with their families, 57.3% of employees said that the family incivility from their parents was the majority, whose performance is consistent with the age characteristics of the respondents. The family incivility implemented by both couples accounted for 11.70%. According to the data collection status, this study does not consider the possible impact of the variable of marriage on the job engagement and workplace well-being of hotel employees.

Measurement of the Variables

The measurement items in this study took the Likert 7 level scale, 1 for complete disagreement and 7 for complete consent.

Independent variable: The measurement index of family incivility comes from the 6-item scale of Lim and Tai [60]. According to the situation and factor load, four items are finally retained, such as "I can be respected in family life". The Cronbach's coefficient of this scale in this paper is 0.866.

Intermediary variable: The measurement index of job engagement came from the 9-item scale of Schaufeli and Salanova [61]. According to the situation and exploratory factor results, three items were finally retained, such as “I am enthusiastic about work; Work has inspired me, "etc. The Cronbach's coefficient of this scale in this paper is 0.939.

Adjustment variables: The measurement of psychological capital from Fred Lucas, lee translation of psychological capital: building competitive advantage [62] of 24 items, including self-efficacy, hope, toughness, and optimism four subscales, according to the situation and factor load, finally retained seven items, the scale Crobanch's coefficient is 0.936.

Depential variable: Measures of workplace well-being comes from the 18-item scale of Zheng and Zhu [63], where 7-12 is workplace well-being, and example items such as "My work is very interesting. Overall, I am very satisfied with the work I do." et al., the Cronbach's coefficient of the scale in this paper is 0.940.

Control variables: Related studies indicate that gender, age, position, and demographic variables such as working life can have an impact on job engagement. Therefore, some demographic variables were included as control variables in this study.

Results

Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Analysis

In this study, descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of each variable are shown in (Table 2). Table 2 shows that family incivility is negatively correlated with job engagement (r=-0.436, P<0.01), family uncivilized behavior is negatively correlated with psychological capital (r=-0.235, P<0.01), family incivility is negatively correlated with workplace well-being (r=-0.239, p<0.01); job engagement is positively correlated with psychological capital (r=0.559, p<0.01) job engagement is positively correlated with workplace well-being (r=0.623, p<0.01); workplace well-being is positively correlated with psychological capital (r=0.716, p<0.01), they have a certain correlation.