Uncertainty tolerance moderates the link between job insecurity and service performance: evidence from China’s hotel frontline employees

The pandemic crisis outbreak has impacted the hospitality industry tremendously. This study investigated the effect of job insecurity on service performance and examined the mediating role of cognitive appraisal and the moderating effect of uncertainty tolerance from the perspectives of cognitive appraisal theory of stress. The study collected a questionnaire from 316 hotel employees at three time points, with a one-month interval between the two time points. The SPSS PROCESS macro and MPLUS are used to test the research hypotheses. The results highlighted that the mediating role of challenge-hindrance appraisal, affirming that job insecurity positively impacts service performance via increasing challenge appraisal, and job insecurity negatively impacts service performance via increasing hindrance appraisal. Furthermore, the results show that uncertainty tolerance moderates the relationship between job insecurity and cognitive appraisal and also moderated the indirect effect of job insecurity on service performance through cognitive appraisal. The research results provide implications for human resource management in the hospitality industry.