When incivility begets incivility among hotel employees: The moderating effects of trait mindfulness and negative affect

The negative impact of workplace incivility on hospitality employees has garnered growing interest. However, most hospitality studies have focused on understanding the impact of customer incivility. Bridging this gap, this research draws on the negative reciprocity belief perspective to propose and test the positive impact of employees’ experience of incivility on their enactment of incivility, which is negatively moderated by trait mindfulness (two-way) and positively moderated by the interaction of trait mindfulness and negative affect (three-way). Two-wave data were collected from 328 hotel employees and managers in Jordan and analysed through structural equation modeling. Results indicated that experienced incivility is positively related to enacted incivility. This positive relationship was mitigated when trait mindfulness was high. Furthermore, negative affect strengthened the positive relationship between experienced and enacted incivility only when trait mindfulness was low. The study’s findings offer implications to help hospitality scholars and hotel managers reduce incivility incidents and impact. • Employees’ experience of incivility fosters their enactment of incivility. • High trait mindfulness inhibits the experienced-enacted incivility linkage. • Low trait mindfulness is influenced by negative affect.