Exploring Negative Restaurant Experiences Through an Extended Mehrabian‐Russell Model: An Attributional Perspective

ABSTRACT The study aims to explore the relationships between service failure severity, negative emotions, level of dissatisfaction, switching intention, and the intention to spread negative word‐of‐mouth (nWOM) in the restaurant context. Additionally, it seeks to investigate how customers' perceptions of the controllability and stability of failures moderate these relationships. Employing a quantitative research approach, data collection was conducted through surveys using a convenience sampling method, resulting in 561 valid responses from Turkish customers. The collected data underwent multi‐group structural equation modeling to examine the proposed relationships, revealing that the severity of failure positively impacts negative emotions and dissatisfaction levels, negative emotions influence the intention to spread nWOM, and dissatisfaction levels positively affect switching intention and the intention to spread nWOM. Furthermore, both controllability and stability perceptions play a moderating role between the severity of the failure and negative emotions, thereby confirming the stimulus, organism, and response model to a significant extent.