How and when customer cyber incivility relates to employees' work and nonwork outcomes: The roles of ego depletion and social support

Abstract As service delivery moves further online, customer–employee exchanges are shifting from traditional face‐to‐face encounters to computer‐mediated interactions. Although research has extensively documented the adverse effects of customer incivility in face‐to‐face service settings, little is known about its online counterpart (i.e., customer cyber incivility). Drawing on ego depletion theory and conservation of resources theory, we develop a theoretical model to explain how and when customer cyber incivility relates to employees' work and nonwork outcomes. We propose that employees' exposure to customer cyber incivility is positively associated with ego depletion, which in turn is related to lower service performance at work and greater work–family conflict at home. In addition, two forms of social support—cognitive social sharing (informational support) and job social support (instrumental support)—attenuate the association between customer cyber incivility and ego depletion and the corresponding indirect associations with work and nonwork outcomes via ego depletion. We tested the model through a 10‐day experience‐sampling study (Study 1) and two scenario‐based experiments (Studies 2A and 2B). Overall, the findings provided more consistent support for the proposed relationships involving work–family conflict than for those involving service performance: The former were supported across all three studies, whereas the latter were supported only in Studies 2A and 2B. This research contributes to the incivility literature by shifting attention to cyber service interactions and identifying cognitive social sharing and job social support as distinct yet complementary resource‐based moderators.