Can employee service adaptivity promote customer citizenship behavior? The roles of interpersonal trust and self-serving attribution

Purpose Customer citizenship behavior is an important yet difficult-to-cultivate source of customer-driven value in service settings. Grounded in attribution theory, this study aims to investigate the influence of employees’ service adaptive behavior on three forms of customer citizenship behavior (feedback, advocacy and helping) and explores the mechanisms and boundary conditions underlying this relationship. Design/methodology/approach A multi-method approach was adopted, combining a questionnaire survey with a scenario-based experiment. The survey provided customer-reported data to examine the hypothesized model, whereas the experiment enabled causal inferences through a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Specifically, employees’ service adaptive behavior (high vs low) and customer self-serving attribution (high vs low) were manipulated, and their effects on affective trust, cognitive trust and three forms of customer citizenship behavior were observed. Findings First, employees’ service adaptive behavior significantly fosters customers’ affective and cognitive trust. Second, affective trust robustly predicts customers’ feedback, advocacy and helping behaviors, while cognitive trust drives feedback and advocacy but not helping behavior. Third, affective trust mediates the links between service adaptive behavior and feedback, advocacy and helping, whereas cognitive trust mediates only the relationships with feedback and advocacy. Fourth, customer self-serving attribution significantly moderates the effects of service adaptive behavior on both affective and cognitive trust. Originality/value This study identifies employee service adaptive behavior as a key antecedent of customer citizenship behavior, extending understanding of how frontline actions influence customer discretionary behaviors. It contributes to trust research by distinguishing affective and cognitive trust and revealing their distinct mediating roles. It also shows that customer self-serving attribution weakens the positive effects of adaptive behavior on trust, highlighting boundary conditions that shape the effectiveness of employee service adaptive behavior.