What Determines Tourist Satisfaction After Service Failure: Three-way Interactions Among Service Recovery, Tourist Restraint, and Service Failure Severity

What Determines Tourist Satisfaction After Service Failure: Three-way Interactions Among Service Recovery, Tourist Restraint, and Service Failure Severity

Purpose - The role of service recovery on customer satisfaction following a service failure encounter has not yet been fully explored, in the Korean tourism context. Given the relevance between tourism and culture, cultural factors embedded in tourists may serve as boundary conditions that impact service recovery performance. Also, serious service failure often limits the effectiveness of recovery. Nevertheless, these aspects have been largely overlooked in previous studies. This study aims to (1) investigate the effects of service recovery on post-recovery tourist satisfaction and (2) examine the potential moderating effects of the tourism. Design/Methodology - Using a questionnaire survey, this study conducted a moderated moderation analysis, suggesting two conditional effects: tourist restraint orientation and service failure severity as potential moderators. Findings - The findings indicate a positive association between service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction, which is stronger for tourists with higher levels of restraint. Further, the severity of the service failure influences how much tourist restraint moderates the situation. Specifically, service failure severity enhances the inf luence of tourist restraint, positively moderating the service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction relationship. Originality/value - Despite tourism’s distinct context, research and evidence on the effects of service recovery and the potential factors that inf luence post-recovery tourist satisfaction in tourism settings have been relatively scarce. This study contributes to a more accurate understanding of service recovery in tourism by identifying the three-way interaction effects of tourist restraint and service failure severity on the relationship between service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction.