Effect of customer misbehavior, personal tradition, and social support on frontline employees’ turnover intention

Increasingly fierce market competition has put forward higher requirements for the service quality of frontline employees. At the same time, the misbehavior of some customers has negative effects on frontline employees. Therefore, this study focused on the mechanism between customer misbehavior and frontline employees’ turnover intention, and used Mplus 8.0 and HLM 6.08 to analyze data from 318 questionnaires. We found the following results: Customer misbehavior was positively related to employees’ turnover intention, personal tradition was negatively related to employees’ turnover intention, personal tradition played a moderating role in the relationship between customer misbehavior and employees’ turnover intention, social support was negatively related to employees’ turnover intention, and social support played a moderating role in the relationship between customer misbehavior and employees’ turnover intention. Our conclusions enrich human resource management theory and provide reference for service-oriented enterprises to improve the stability of frontline employees.