Perceived-Control Salience in Service Recovery: Area-Level Economic Disadvantage and Consumer Disputes

This study develops a perceived-control salience framework for understanding the experiences of consumers in economically disadvantaged areas during service recovery. Drawing on 141,251 complaint narratives submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we examine how seven salience dimensions relate to dispute escalation. The results suggest that cognitive-control and behavioral-control salience have the strongest positive associations with disputing. Emotional-control salience, decision-control salience, and predictive-control salience have weaker positive associations, whereas information-control salience is negatively associated with dispute escalation. The study contributes to service recovery and consumer vulnerability research by showing how economic disadvantage changes which control-related cues become behaviorally predictive in institutional complaint systems. The findings suggest that effective recovery should reduce comprehension burdens, lower action costs, and avoid treating disclosure alone as sufficient consumer support.