SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Understanding regulatory focuses

The role of employees’ regulatory focus in stress coping styles, and turnover intent to a

five-star hotel Hyo Sun Jung and Hye Hyun Yoon

Department of Culinary and Service Management, College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul,

Republic of Korea

Abstract Purpose – The aim of the study was to examine whether five-star hotel employees’ promotion focus significantly influences their task-coping style, and whether their prevention focus has a significant effect on their emotion- and avoidance-coping styles. This study also investigates the moderating impact of employees’ tenure on the relationships between stress-coping styles and turnover intent. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 342 five-star hotel employees in South Korea participated in the study using a self-administered questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to examine the hypothesized relationships between the constructs. Findings – Hotel employees’ turnover intent decreases when they are motivated by strategies corresponding to their regulatory focus. This study found that hotel employees’ promotion focus had a significant positive effect on their task-coping style, whereas prevention focus had a significant negative effect on the emotion- and avoidance-coping style. In addition, employees’ task-coping style negatively affected their intent to leave the organization, while their emotion-coping and avoidance-coping styles positively affected turnover intent. Finally, moderating effects were related to tenure in the causal relationships among stress-coping styles and turnover intent. Thus, one can infer that the emotion-coping style has a greater effect on turnover intent in employees with a relatively short tenure than in those with a long tenure. Practical implications – This study verified that hotel employees’ regulatory focus plays an important role in employee behavior within organizations just as individual characteristics such as personality or values do. Thus, a substantial application plan for employees’ regulatory focus was proposed for the organizational dimension. In addition, diverse plans were presented for employees’ flexible coping with stress, based on differing turnover intent, depending on employees’ stress-coping styles. Through this, a plan for reducing employee turnover intent was pursued. Originality/value – This study associated employees’ stress-coping styles, which had been dealt with in the human resources management area, with their regulatory focus and showed that different stress-coping styles might be derived using such regulatory focus; the resulting turnover intent might also be different. The study results can provide a theoretical basis for understanding relationships among regulatory focus, stress-copying styles and turnover intent as such research is relatively lacking. Finally, this study is meaningful in that it applied the regulatory focus theory centered on customer behaviors to employees and verified the moderating effect of employees’ tenure between stress-coping styles and turnover intent.

Keywords Promotion focus, Regulatory focus, Prevention focus, Stress-coping styles, Turnover intent, Five-star hotel

Paper type Research paper

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-6119.htm

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Received 13 July 2013 Revised 26 November 2013

27 January 2014 2 March 2014

Accepted 29 March 2014

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality

Management Vol. 27 No. 2, 2015

pp. 283-307 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-07-2013-0288

1. Introduction Motivation is a key theme in organizational behavior (Lee et al., 2010) that refers to internal or external power supporting and maintaining an individual’s behavior (Steer and Porter, 1991). A person’s regulatory focus is a specific strategic and motivational orientation adopted during goal pursuit (Higgins, 1997; Pham and Chang, 2010). Higgins (2000) used the term regulatory focus to explain motivation in the process of pursuing one’s goals. Two types of independent self-regulatory focuses can be distinguished (Higgins, 1997, 2000):

(1) Promotion focus, which emphasizes approach-orientated styles. (2) Prevention focus, which emphasizes avoidance-oriented styles.

The promotion focus and prevention focus can be situationally induced by priming or problem framing (Markovits et al., 2008). According to Shah et al. (1998), those with a promotion focus emphasize passion and achievement and focus on positive results, whereas those with a prevention focus emphasize stability and responsibility and focus on negative results. Therefore, those with a strong promotion focus are motivated by incentives related to goal achievement, while those with a strong prevention focus are motivated by incentives related to safety goals. Those with a promotion focus concentrate more on what they can obtain than on what they cannot, and those with a prevention focus more sensitively respond to what is lost than what is not (Idson et al., 2000). Therefore, when prevention focus-oriented people make decisions, their most important goal is “safety”, as they have a strong tendency to avoid risk (Crowe and Higgins, 1997).

Meanwhile, although faced with the same stressful environment, individuals might respond differently (Chan, 2003). They might deal with stress using task-coping positive methods or negative methods of emotion- and avoidance-coping styles depending on their characteristics (Leandro and Castillo, 2010). Researchers have asserted that differences in employees’ regulatory focus result in different methods of coping with job stress because organizational employees prefer to cope with stress using their own individual styles (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978). How flexibly and actively employees respond to stressful situations determines whether their organization’s productivity increases or decreases. In addition, employees’ turnover intent can increase or decrease depending on the style with which they tackle stress in a stressful situation (Callan et al., 1994; Nicholls et al., 2012).

However, major issues in research on regulatory focus have concerned marketing methods based on customers’ regulatory focus in terms of their behaviors (Brenninkmeijer et al., 2010; Chou and Lien, 2012; Jing and Lee, 2006; Pham and Chang, 2010; Pham and Trudel, 2008; Som and Lee, 2012; Tamar and Higgins, 2006; Trudel et al., 2012; Wan et al., 2011), while research on the causal relationships between employees’ regulatory focus and their behaviors within an organization is scarce (Gorman et al., 2012; Markovits et al., 2008). Markovits et al. (2008) noted that public employees’ promotion focus greatly influenced their emotional devotion, and their prevention focus had a relatively significant influence on continuous devotion – a concept similar to turnover intent. Gorman et al. (2012) observed that promotion focus had a greater effect on job performance and satisfaction than prevention focus through a meta-analysis of employees’ regulatory focus, verifying that employees’ promotion focus triggered more positive job behaviors than their prevention focus.

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Despite its importance, research that has considered organic causality among employees’ regulatory focus, stress-coping styles and turnover intent remains very rare. Furthermore, Zhao and Namasivayam (2012) are the only researchers to conduct a relevant study about hotels, which are representative of firms that provide customer-oriented services. Hotel employees are exposed to excessive working hours, tough job demands and a lack of job control (Chiang et al., 2010; O’Neill and Davis, 2011). In addition, hotels prioritize customers’ emotions rather than employees’ emotions, thereby forcing employees to show the expressed emotion in the process of having contact with customers (Jain and Jain, 2005). In particular, customer dissatisfaction is directly linked to customers’ evaluation of employees. Therefore, hotel employees must respond consistently with a positive attitude, even to customers’ unfair demands. Hotel employees may experience dissonance, and thus stress, in their emotions in the work environment, as opposed to the emotion they are required to express (Lam and Chen, 2012). This can be explained as an effort toward emotional expression demanded from the organization and as emotional labor (Morris and Feldman, 1996), which is a control, in the process of employees performing services for customers. Owing to the emotional coercion associated with this endeavor, hotel employees make an effort to hide or change their own emotions in the service situation, thereby leading to burnout and stress (Kim, 2008). Because hotel jobs require employees to express positive emotions regardless of their own emotions, they often experience stress.

Therefore, their turnover intent is relatively higher than in other businesses (Jung et al., 2012). This leads to the question of whether hotel employees’ approach to coping with stress and their turnover intent differ according to their regulatory focus – a personal trait of hotel employees frequently exposed to a stressful situation due to their job characteristics. Accordingly, through this study, the researcher intended to resolve this question and discuss efficient styles of coping with stress suitable for hotel employees’ regulatory focus, thereby aiming to decrease their turnover intent. Meanwhile, employees’ tenure has a close relationship with their behavior within the organization (Karatepe and Karatepe, 2010; Elahi and Apoorva, 2012); thus, it is likely have a differential influence, even on the style of coping with stress in the working situation and turnover intent.

Specific suggestions that can be derived through this study include the following. First, hotel employees face many stressful situations in the process of performing their jobs, and finding appropriate stress-coping styles corresponding to their regulatory focus is necessary. Accordingly, this study predicts that the different regulatory focus of hotel employees will result in different styles of coping with stressful situations and that such regulatory focus influences employees’ organizational attitudes. Thus, this study first examined appropriate stress-coping styles according to employees’ regulatory focus in terms of a business’s internal marketing and attempted to use the results as fundamental material to develop diverse education and training programs. Second, the study examined whether hotel employees’ stress-coping styles resulted in their differing turnover intent and helped decrease turnover intent among employees with high turnover intent through the use of efficient stress-coping styles. Furthermore, the study aimed to clarify the moderating effect between stress-coping style and turnover intent according to employees’ tenure. The next section presents the theoretical background and rationales for the research hypothesis regarding the interaction of employees’ regulatory focus, stress-coping styles and turnover intent. This is followed by the

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empirical studies and results. Finally, we discuss the findings in light of their theoretical and practical implications.

2. Literature review and conceptual model 2.1 Regulatory focus, stress-coping styles and turnover intent Regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997) is a theory about how people pursue goals. Regulatory focus includes promotion focus (positive outcomes) and prevention focus (negative outcomes) (Higgins et al., 1994; Vaughn et al., 2008). People adjust their motivations through these two focuses (Higgins, 1997). The promotion focus and prevention focus are also distinct in the types of strategies that regulatory systems activate in the pursuit of goals (Pham and Avnet, 2004; Trudel et al., 2012). Promotion focus is sensitive to the presence or absence of positive outcomes (e.g. ideals, wishes, dreams and aspirations); thus, the strategic disposition of people with promotion focus is to approach a goal in a state of enthusiasm (Gino and Margolis, 2011). Meanwhile, prevention focus is generally avoidance motivated and has a safety or vigilance orientation consistent with an individual’s required tasks (e.g. duties, responsibilities and obligations) (Arnold and Reynolds, 2009). Given this negative outcome focus, the strategic disposition of people with prevention focus is a state of guard (Pham and Chang, 2010).

Stress coping refers to constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the employee (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Although the issue of whether individuals’ capabilities to cope with stress are related to their temperamental traits or their styles are affected by specific conditions is still under debate, when there is some reason to cope with stress in environmental terms, individuals are expected to be able to exert coping abilities. In other words, coping with stress is perceived as a response, a behavioral concept (Aldwin and Revension, 1987). Stress-coping styles are divided into three aspects: task coping, emotion coping, and avoidance coping. Task coping means that employees take active and positive measures to change a stressful situation by making decisions or taking certain direct actions to resolve the problem (Higgins and Endler, 1995). This means stress-coping styles in the form of attempting to resolve a problem employees experienced or making efforts to figure out the cause of a problem (Folkman and Lazarus, 1980). Accordingly, task coping is behavior oriented and is employees’ direct coping style for solving stress (Gupta and Derevensky, 2001). Emotion coping is directed toward regulating the emotions of the employee under stress (Latack and Havlovic, 1992). This means that when employees are faced with a stressful situation, they vent their anger to others and intend not to recognize the problem itself. Avoidance coping can be described as cognitive and behavioral efforts directed toward minimizing, denying or ignoring a stressful situation (Holahan et al., 2005). These are stress-coping styles in the form of refreshing themselves through other activities or just hoping that the stressful situation will disappear. In general, research suggests that task-oriented coping styles tend to lead to more positive outcomes (satisfaction and commitment) than emotion- and avoidance-coping styles (Frydenberg and Lewis, 2004).

Turnover intent is an employee’s intention to quit his or her current job or leave his or her organization (Meyer and Allen, 1984). It is an advance notice prior to actual resignation and, in a broader sense, an individual’s movement across the boundary of membership of a social system (Price, 1977). Macy and Mirivis (1976) noted that a

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change of occupation was a permanent transfer beyond the boundary of an organization; they differentiated it from temporary dismissal or promotion or transfer within an organization. As a variable of employees’ behavioral performance, turnover intent has been used in a majority of studies as a concept to replace turnover behaviors because turnover intent played the role of an antecedent factor, effectively predicting actual turnover behaviors (Brown and Peterson, 1993). In addition, turnover intent can be explained on the basis of individual differences, stress- and change-related attitudes, and contextual variables, such as interpersonal relationships and culture (Holtom et al., 2008; Kumar and Singh, 2012).

2.2 Relationship between regulatory focus and stress-coping styles 2.2.1 Promotion focus and stress-coping styles. The research on relationships between employees’ regulatory promotion focus and stress-coping styles is limited. In a similar study that examined the relationship between employees’ promotion focus and stress-coping styles, Shah et al. (1998) found that strong promotion focus are highly motivated to continue to perform their job. Also, Brenninkmeijer et al. (2010) noted that high promotion focus of employees had greater influence on relationship between job resources and their positive behaviors (such as engagement, satisfaction and commitment) due to their achievement-oriented and challenging attitudes in a job situation. Of course, this is the limited outcome to the job resource model, thereby being guessed to be likely difficult to expect direct association with this study. Crowe and Higgins (1997) stated that a person who is strong in promotion focus desires to establish a more definite alternative plan after experiencing failure in job situation or being engaged in difficult work. Brockner and Higgins (2001) found that a person who is strong in promotion focus positively focuses on the job even in a stressful situation because of continuous strategic attempts to make it consistent with his/her own goal or standard. Tamir (2005) asserted that promotion focus was closely associated with positive emotions related to pleasure and, therefore, in a stressful situation employees with promotion focus were likely to cope with a stressful situation in a developmental way. Also, while Laurie (2012) noted that employees with high promotion focus had a high possibility of coping with a stressful situation in job-oriented ways, Zhao and Namasivayam (2012) observed that, due to their desire for achievement, employees with promotion focus wisely cope with stressful conflict situations between their workplace and home through positive behavior and cognitive strategies. Sassenberg and Scholl (2013) mentioned that this is accredited to having propensity of performing their own task autonomously, as the promotion focus is higher in a will to perform challenging work in value than the prevent focus in a will. This leads to the possibility that a person with strong promotion focus likely has high intention of controlling initiative by oneself even in a stressful situation.

2.2.2 Prevention focus and stress-coping styles. Higgins and Tykocinski (1992) noted that those with strong prevention focus tend to avoid failure, and Brockner and Higgins (2001) observed that regulatory focus had a close relationship with employees’ emotions and behavior in a job situation and in particular, prevention focus had significant relationship with emotions. Tamir (2005) demonstrated that prevention focus is associated with an emotional state of relief–anxiety; those with a prevention focus are likely to engage in emotional and avoidance behavior due to their emotional disposition of anxiety. Brenninkmeijer et al. (2010) suggested that conservative and preventive

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attitudes of employees with high preventive focus more greatly influenced relationship between their job demand and emotional exhaustion, which may cause their emotional and avoidance attitudes in a stress coping situation. This is presumed because when employees have high prevention focus they wish to avoid unwanted or unsatisfactory conditions; they have a high tendency to be passive and evade risks in a certain situation and, therefore, also respond negatively to a stressful situation. However, this is also the limited outcome to a job demand model. Also, Benjamin and Flynn (2006) mentioned that people with the strong prevention focus do prefer a transactional leader and that this is accredited to preferring a superior to supplement their own demerit because of their strong avoidant tendency. Sassenberg and Scholl (2013) noted that a person with the strong prevention focus prefers complementary situation in job, thereby having the possibility of likely showing avoidant tendency rather than taking the initiative to find the solution, given the occurrence of stress. This study suggests that there is a high possibility that the prevention focus evasively copes with stress of occurring in job situation. Additionally, the researcher in the present study will make inferences from some studies that examine differences in employees’ stress-coping styles, according to their conscientiousness and neuroticism. To infer a relationship between regulatory focus and stress-coping styles, Vianen et al. (2012) noted that neuroticism is closely related to prevention focus, while conscientiousness is closely associated with promotion focus. In a study of similar perspectives, Brebner (2001) observed that conscientiousness was closely related with task coping, while neuroticism was with emotion coping. Furlani (2005) and Matthews et al. (2006) demonstrated that those with strong conscientiousness prefer problem-solving coping styles, while those with high neuroticism favor emotion-coping styles. Burgess et al. (2010) said that certain personality traits – openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness – are associated with problem-solving coping styles, such as active planning and reframing. Kim and Agrusa (2011) said that neuroticism is highly correlated with the emotion-coping style.

Based on these results, the present study hypothesizes that hotel employees’ promotion focus positively influences their task-coping style (a positive stress coping) but that prevention focus positively affects emotion-coping and avoidance-coping styles (negative stress coping). These arguments lead to the following hypotheses:

H1. Employees’ promotion focus is positively related with task-coping style.

H2. Employees’ prevention focus is positively related with emotion-coping style (a) and avoidance-coping style (b).

2.3 Relationship between stress-coping styles and turnover intent Studies of employees’ organizational behaviors in accordance with their stress-coping styles in a stressful situation mostly examine their psychological anxiety or exhaustion as dependent variables, and few studies have used turnover intent as an ultimate dependent variable. Most previous studies on stress-coping styles have mentioned problem-solving styles to cope with stress and they are in contrast with avoidance-coping measures among measurement scales used in the present study; avoidance-coping style measures mean stress coping measures not making efforts to resolve a problem in a stressful situation and just evading them.

In this context, Folkman and Lazarus (1980) asserted that only problem-solving efforts in an attempt to control problems themselves reduce stress, thereby decreasing

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turnover intent, Lee and Ashforth (1996) noted that the problem-coping style is very closely related to job exhaustion. Callan et al. (1994) observed that employees’ emotion-coping style causes negative behaviors resulting from anxiety and depression, and Shevaune (2003) said that the emotion-coping style lowers job satisfaction and increases voluntary turnover intent. Carmona et al. (2006) asserted that the direct and temporary stress-coping style increases exhaustion, influencing turnover intent, whereas Liu and Chou (2006) observed that stress-coping styles increase exhaustion and, therefore, turnover intent. Boyd et al. (2009) observed that the emotion-coping style increases emotional exhaustion, thereby decreasing satisfaction and increasing turnover intent. They stressed the negative effects of the emotion-coping style, noting that the problem-coping style reduces emotional exhaustion, thereby significantly affecting job satisfaction and turnover intent. Parker and Martin (2009, 2011) found that the emotion-coping style induces low job satisfaction and a low level of participation in an organization; in a study of the effects of restaurant employees’ job stress on their turnover intent, Kim (2010) verified significant moderating effects of stress-coping styles, noting that a group with appropriate stress-coping styles reduced turnover intent caused by job stress. Also, Chang et al. (2006) demonstrated that mental stress becomes a cause of coping with stress with the avoidant method in a working situation and this leads to employees’ negative behavior. Welbourne et al. (2007) suggested the association with turnover intent while mentioning that a stress-coping style in avoidant method reduces job satisfaction. Golbasi et al. (2008) mentioned that an avoidant and inactive coping in a stressful situation shows a negative relationship with the job satisfaction. Nicholls et al. (2012) observed that athletes’ avoidance-coping style negatively affects satisfaction, but their task-coping style positively influences satisfaction, suggesting that turnover intent differs according to stress-coping styles. To sum up, it is deemed that the task-coping style, a positive coping style, decreases turnover intent, and emotion- and avoidance-coping styles have a relatively strong influence on negative employees’ attitudes, thereby increasing turnover intent. These arguments lead to the following hypothesis:

H3. Employees’ task-coping style (negatively) (a), emotion-coping style (positively) (b) and avoidance-coping style (positively) (c) are related with turnover intent.

2.4 Moderating effects of employees’ tenure There are not so many studies which clarified the moderating effect of tenure in the effects of employees’ stress coping measures on their turnover intent. To mention some studies, Goldenberg and Waddell (1990) noted that the methods for professors of nursing studies to cope with stress differed according to their tenure; those who worked for longer than three years coped with stress in a much more positive way than those who worked for less than three years. Bennett et al. (1997) also observed that employees with a long tenure exhibited problem-solving coping styles, while employees with a short tenure were likely to utilize avoidance-coping styles. Karatepe and Karatepe (2010) found that the hotel employees who worked for a long time had excellent capabilities to cope with stress and burnout in their organization. Marjan and Nasrin (2010) also asserted that the longer an employee’s tenure, the more he or she was likely to cope with stress in a positive way. In addition, Elahi and Apoorva (2012) showed that an increase in employees’ tenure led to an increase in their interpersonal skills and self-confidence in their job, and they came to cope with their job in a problem-solving way. As studies not

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dealing with stress-coping styles, Jung et al. (2012) asserted that the influence hotel employees’ exhaustion had on their turnover intent was relatively much higher in those with a short tenure because they did not cope with stress in an efficient way. To infer from the above studies, employees with a short tenure were lacking in their styles to cope with stress or exhaustion or adaptability and as a result had greater turnover intent. Based on the above results, this study hypothesized that the effect of employees’ stress-coping styles on their turnover intent will be different according to their tenure. Accordingly, this study divided employees into those whose tenure was longer than 10 years and those whose tenure was shorter than 10 years to verify its moderating effect. The following hypothesis was established (see Figure 1).

H4. The links among employees’ stress-coping styles and turnover intent in short-tenure (� 10 years) and long-tenure (� 10 years) groups are different.

3. Research methodology 3.1 Procedure and participants The data used for this study were collected from employees in five-star (deluxe) hotels in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012. Among 12 five-star chain-hotels located in Seoul, ten hotels whose human resources management (HRM) department provided organic collaboration were selected. Once the HRM managers gave permission, employees were provided with a voluntary survey and were asked by the researcher to complete the self-administered questionnaires. The completed questionnaires were sealed in envelopes to protect employee anonymity and were collected by the researcher one week later. Fifty questionnaires were distributed to each of the ten hotels (a total of 500 questionnaires). Among the 50 copies, 25 copies were distributed to front-of-house (FOH) employees and the other 25 copies to back of house (BOH) employees. After eliminating incomplete questionnaires, a total of 342 questionnaires were obtained over a one-month period (response rate of 68.40 per cent), samples with even a single missing value were deleted. The characteristics of the participant are presented in Table I. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents were older than 40 years of age and slightly more

Figure 1. A proposed model of regulatory focus, stress coping styles and turnover intent

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than three quarters of the respondents were male. Most participants had a community college or university degree (91.5 per cent). Their primary job positions were BOH (culinary department) (50.6 per cent), FOH (service department) (26.3 per cent) and others (management department) (23.1 per cent). The majority were full-time workers (80.7 per cent). They had been working at their current hotel for five years or fewer (44.2 per cent).

3.2 Instrument development A pilot test involving 50 five-star hotel employees was conducted to ensure the reliability of the scales. Some terms that had become indigestible as going through the translation process were modified on the basis of the results of the pilot test. The reason was that the same sentence may be understood differently according to cultural differences and some errors may occur in the process of transforming an English questionnaire into a Korean questionnaire (Adler, 1983; Brislin, 1980). Pilot testing was performed through interviews with 25 FOH employees and 25 BOH employees. Several modifications were subsequently made based on the results. The survey instrument was divided into four parts:

(1) regulatory focus; (2) stress-coping styles; (3) turnover intent; and (4) participants’ demographic information and job-related information.

Table I. Profile of the sample

(n � 342)

Characteristic N (%)

Age 21 to 30 years 106 31.0 31 to 40 years 117 34.2 Older than 40 years 119 34.8

Gender Male 265 77.5 Female 77 22.5

Education High school 29 8.5 Community college degree (2 years) 180 52.6 University degree (4 years) 133 38.9

Position BOH 173 50.6 FOH 90 26.3 Others 79 23.1

Tenure 5 years and below 151 44.2 6-9 years 34 9.9 10-14 years 33 9.6 15 years and above 124 36.3

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To measure employees’ regulatory focus, this study adapted the ten-item scales by Brenninkmeijer et al. (2010). We examined two dimensions of employees’ regulatory focus (Brenninkmeijer et al., 2010; Lockwood et al., 2002): promotion focus (five items) and prevention focus (five items). Regulatory focus items were “In general, I am focused on achieving positive outcomes in my life” (promotion focus), and “I often worry that I will fail to accomplish my academic goal” (prevention focus).” Each regulatory focus item was measured with ten items using a 7-point scale: “How much do you agree or disagree with these statements?” (1: strongly disagree to 7: strongly agree). Stress-coping styles were measured using nine items on a 7-point scale (1: strongly disagree to 7: strongly agree) based on the work of Endler and Parker (1994) and Matthews and Campbell (1998). We examined three dimensions of stress-coping styles (Matthews and Campbell, 1998): task coping, emotion coping and avoidance coping. Stress-coping style items were:

• “I worked out a strategy for successful performance” (task coping). • “I became preoccupied with my problem” (emotion coping). • “I stayed detached or distanced from the situation” (avoidance coping).

Respondent turnover intent was also measured on a 7-point scale (1: strongly disagree to 7: strongly agree), as developed by Cammann et al. (1979), Seashore et al. (1982) and Jung et al. (2012). The turnover intent items included:

• “I have given some serious thought to looking for a job in another company”; and • “I will quit my job at my current organization in 1 year or less.”

Part 4 contained questions about participants’ demographic information (e.g. age, gender and education) and job-related information (e.g. position and tenure).

3.3 Analysis The collected data were analyzed using the AMOS program. Descriptive statistics were performed to profile the sample’s demographic and job-related questions. Data were analyzed using the two-step approach recommended by Anderson and Gerbing (1988). First, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood was performed to estimate the measurement model, which determined whether the manifest variables reflected the hypothesized latent variables. Second, a structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the validity of the proposed model and hypotheses.

4. Results 4.1 Measurement model As shown in Table II, confirmatory measurement models demonstrated the soundness of the measurement properties (�2� 563.51; df � 215; p � 0.001; �2/df � 2.62; GFI � 0.88; NFI � 0.91; CFI � 0.94; IFI � 0.94; RMSEA � 0.06). Also, convergent validity was observed as all confirmatory factor loadings exceeded 0.70 and were significant at the alpha level of 0.001 (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). Internal consistency in each construct was acceptable with composite reliability estimates, ranging from 0.72 to 0.89 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Cronbach’s alpha estimates ranged from 0.84 to 0.95 and were considered acceptable (Nunnally, 1978). In addition, all average variance extracted (AVE) estimates exceeded the recommended 0.50 threshold (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).

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Discriminant validity was evident as the variance extracted estimates, ranging from 0.65 to 0.83 (promotion focus � 0.73; prevention focus � 0.65; task coping � 0.65; emotion coping � 0.72; avoidance coping � 0.67; turnover intent � 0.83), exceeded all squared correlations for each pair of constructs, ranging from 0.01 to 0.09 (See Table III). This study additionally verified multicollinearity as no correlation coefficients exceeded 0.5 (0.04-0.31). The result (Table III) revealed no problem with collinearity, as tolerance was far greater than 0.1, and variance inflation factor was far less than 10. Also, to address a potential common method bias, we checked for possible common method variance using Harman’s single-factor test (Harman, 1967; Podsakoff et al., 2003). An exploratory factor analysis of the 26 items revealed seven factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00. No single factor explained a majority of the variance, thus providing

Table II. Reliabilities and CFA

properties

Construct Standardized loadings t-value CCRa (Cronbach’s alpha) AVEb

Promotion focus 0.89 0.73 MF1 0.85 Fixed (0.93) MF2 0.88 21.28*** MF3 0.89 21.97*** MF4 0.78 17.61*** MF5 0.86 20.60***

Prevention focus 0.82 0.65 VF1 0.76 Fixed (0.90) VF2 0.82 15.48*** VF3 0.82 15.45*** VF4 0.84 15.89*** VF5 0.78 14.69***

Task coping 0.84 0.65 TC1 0.87 Fixed (0.84) TC2 0.83 13.61*** TC3 0.71 15.56***

Emotion coping 0.72 0.72 EC1 0.86 Fixed (0.87) EC2 0.96 20.97*** EC3 0.71 15.33***

Avoidance coping 0.78 0.67 AC1 0.82 Fixed (0.86) AC2 0.88 15.59*** AC3 0.77 15.07***

Turnover intent 0.86 0.83 TI1 0.83 Fixed (0.95) TI2 0.96 24.59*** TI3 0.96 24.78*** TI4 0.90 22.21***

Notes: a CCR � composite construct reliability; b AVE � average variance extracted; �2 � 563.51 (df � 215) p � 0.001; �2/df � 2.62; GFI � 0.88; NFI � 0.91; TLI � 0.93; CFI � 0.94; IFI � 0.94; RMSEA � 0.06; *** p � 0.001

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evidence that common method bias was not a threat. In addition, our scale items revealed eight factors that explained 83.761 per cent of the variance in our study’s constructs, with the first factor explaining 23.404 per cent and the last factor explaining 6.280 per cent of the total variance.

4.2 Structural equation modeling SEM was conducted to test the validity of the proposed model and the hypotheses (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). Hu and Bentler (1999) recommended that comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker–Lewis index root (TLI), mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), or relative noncentrality index (RNI) should be used as the suitability index when the number of sample cases is greater than 250 and that the datum points should be greater than 0.95 in CFI and less than 0.06 in RMSEA, with Types 1 and 2 errors taken into account. Figure 2 presents the estimated model, illustrating the direction and magnitude of the impact of the standardized path coefficients. The chi-square statistic indicated that the model did not fit the data well (�2 � 573.64; df � 218; p � 0.001; �2/df � 2.63).

Figure 2. SEM with parameter estimates

Table III. Means, standard deviations and correlation analysis

Construct 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mean � SDa

Promotion focus 1 5.25 � 1.13 Prevention focus 0.15*** 1 4.38 � 1.17 Task coping 0.26*** �0.11*** 1 5.38 � 0.85 Emotion coping �0.16*** 0.23*** �0.09 1 4.04 � 1.46 Avoidance coping �0.05 0.15*** 0.23*** 0.30*** 1 4.98 � 1.11 Turnover intent �0.24*** 0.04 �0.10 0.31*** 0.24*** 1 3.53 � 1.65

Notes: a SD � standard deviation, all items were measured on a 7-point likert scale from 1-strongly disagree to 7-strongly agree; all correlations are significant at p � 0.01; multicollinearity: tolerance (promotion focus � 0.85; prevention focus � 0.87; task coping � 0.83; emotion coping � 0.84; avoidance coping � 0.82), variance inflation factor (promotion focus � 1.16; prevention focus � 1.14; task coping � 1.19; emotion coping � 1.20; avoidance coping � 1.21); *** all correlations are significant at p � 0.01

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Given the sensitivity of the chi-square statistics to sample size (Bentler and Bonett, 1980), other fit indices were also examined. Other goodness-of-fit (GFI) indices proved that the structural model reasonably fit the data (GFI � 0.88; AGFI � 0.85; NFI � 0.91; CFI � 0.94; RMSEA � 0.06). The model’s fit, as indicated by these indices, was deemed satisfactory; thus, it provided a good basis for testing the hypothesized paths (Table IV). H1, which hypothesized a positive significant relationship between employees’ promotion focus and task coping, was supported. Promotion focus significantly affected the task-coping style, a positive stress-coping style (� � 0.28; t-value � 4.65; p � 0.001); those with achievement-oriented promotion focus are considered to overcome stress by utilizing active and realistic measures by making positive changes in their jobs. H2, which predicted a positive significant relationship among employees’ prevention focus, emotion coping and avoidance coping, was also supported. Prevention focus significantly influenced the emotion-coping style (� � 0.23; t-value � 3.88; p � 0.001) and the avoidance-coping style (� � 0.12; t-value � 1.97; p � 0.001), negative stress-coping styles. Employees with strong prevention focus tend to escape from stress by using emotional or avoidance styles; therefore, prevention focus is considered to have significant influence on the emotion-coping style or avoidance-coping style, which are negative stress-coping styles. Based on these results, we verified complete differences in employees’ stress-coping styles according to the regulatory focus. In H3, we predicted the influence of employees’ coping styles on turnover intent. In more detail, task coping (� � �0.18; t � �3.25; p � 0.001), emotion coping (� � 0.26; t � 4.33; p � 0.001) and avoidance coping (� � 0.22; t � 3.84; p � 0.001) significantly affected employees’ turnover intent, thereby supporting H3. We found that, among employees’ stress-coping styles, the task-coping style decreased turnover intent, whereas the emotion-coping or avoidance-coping styles increased it.

In addition, as a result of considering the direct effect of regulatory focus and turnover intent, even if not mentioned in the results, the promotion focus (� � �0.15; t � �2.072; p � 0.01) had a negative influence upon turnover intent. The prevention focus (� � �0.04; t � �0.68; p � 0.05) was not found to have a significant influence on

Table IV. Structural parameter

estimates

Hypothesized path �-value t-value Results

H1 Promotion focus ¡ Task coping 0.28 4.65*** Supported H2a Prevention focus ¡ Emotion coping 0.23 3.88*** Supported H2b Prevention focus ¡ Avoidance coping 0.12 1.97* Supported H3a Task coping ¡ Turnover intent �0.19 �3.32*** Supported H3b Emotion coping ¡ Turnover intent 0.23 4.32*** Supported H3c Avoidance coping ¡ Turnover intent 0.22 3.84*** Supported Goodness-of-fit statistics �2(221) � 592.68 (p � 0.001)

�2/df � 2.68 GFI � 0.88

AGFI � 0.85 NFI � 0.90 CFI � 0.94

RMSEA � 0.07

Notes: * p � 0.05, *** p � 0.001; GFI � goodness-of-fit index; NFI � normed fit index; CFI � comparative fit index; RMSEA � root mean square error of approximation

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turnover intention, which further suggests that efficient development in employees’ promotion focus possibly leads to preventing the turnover of excellent human resources. Brenninkmeijer et al. (2010) found that employees with strong promotion focus sensitively respond in the relationship between job resources and motivational attitudes, and as a result, promotion focus more greatly acts in job resources, decreasing turnover intent more than prevention focus.

4.3 The moderating effect of employees’ tenure To test the moderating effects of employee tenure on stress-coping styles, and turnover intent, based on a multigroup approach, �2 differences with two degrees of freedom were used to compare the two models (unconstrained and constrained) for each of the path coefficients, consecutively. The results of the moderating effects of tenure are shown in Table V. The unconstrained model for tenure showed a good fit to the data (�2 � 1,074.08; df � 442; p � 0.001; �2/df � 2.43; GFI � 0.80; NFI � 0.84; TLI � 0.88; CFI � 0.90; IFI � 0.90; RMSEA � 0.06). As for the link between employees’ stress-coping styles and turnover intent, statistically significant group differences were detected based on the �2 differences between the two models (emotion coping ¡ turnover intent; � �2(df � 1) � 16.49, p � 0.05). The results showed that the effects of employees’ emotion-coping style on turnover intent were significantly stronger in the short-tenure group (� � 0.40; p � 0.001) than in the long-tenure group (� � 0.01; p � 0.05). In emotion-coping style employees, those with fewer than 10 years of work experience had higher turnover intent than those with more than 10 years of work experience. To sum up, it can be inferred that the emotion-coping style has a greater effect on turnover intent in employees with relatively a short tenure than in those with a long tenure. H4 was partially accepted as well.

5. Discussion and conclusion 5.1 Conclusion In this study, we examined the regulatory focus of five-star hotel employees in relation to stress-coping styles and turnover intent. We found that the promotion focus of hotel employees had a significant, positive effect on their task-coping style. These findings support the results of previous work (Vianen et al., 2012; Zhao and Namasivayam, 2012), suggesting that those with a promotion focus, who are achievement- and challenge oriented, overcome stress with positive task-coping styles. The prevention focus also had a significant, positive effect on the emotion-coping style and avoidance-coping style. This was consistent with the result that employees with high prevention focus tend to avoid a new task by using emotion- and avoidance-coping styles in a stressful situation (Brenninkmeijer et al., 2010; Tamir, 2005). Those with a prevention focus, who are conservative, are expected to respond to stress through emotion-coping styles or negative styles of avoidance, such as drinking and forgetting. Those with a promotion focus are expected to be sensitive to achievement, improvement and enhancement and to be oriented toward strategies to approach their goals with an attitude of accepting challenges; such strategies are also applied to their stress-coping styles (Higgins, 2000). On the other hand, those with a prevention focus are not challenge oriented, but engage in avoidance behaviors to try to escape anxiety; therefore, they cope with stress in an emotional and avoiding way.

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Table V. Moderating effects of

employees’ tenure

L es

s th

an 10

ye ar

s (N

� 18

5) O

ve r

10 ye

ar s

(N �

15 7)

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ch i-s

qu ar

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f �

44 2)

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2 (d

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2 (d

f �

1) St

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ed co

ef fi

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ts t-

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ts t-

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T as

k co

pi ng

¡ T

ur no

ve r

in te

nt �

0. 14

� 2.

02 *

� 0.

37 �

4. 09

** *

1, 07

4. 08

1, 07

6. 91

2. 83

n s

E m

ot io

n co

pi ng

¡ T

ur no

ve r

in te

nt 0.

40 5.

56 **

* 0.

01 0.

18 n

s 1,

07 4.

08 1,

09 0.

57 16

.4 9*

A vo

id an

ce co

pi ng

¡ T

ur no

ve r

in te

nt 0.

12 1.

63 n

s 0.

28 3.

37 **

* 1,

07 4.

08 1,

07 5.

60 1.

52 n

s

N o te

s: �

2 �

1, 07

4. 08

(d f

� 44

2) p

� 0.

00 1;

� 2 /d

f �

2. 43

;G F

I �

0. 80

;N F

I �

0. 84

;T L

I �

0. 88

;C F

I �

0. 90

;I F

I �

0. 90

;R M

S E

A �

0. 06

; *

p �

0. 05

; **

* p

� 0.

00 1,

n s :

no t

si gn

ifi ca

nt

297

Regulatory focus in stress coping styles

As for the link between stress-coping styles and turnover intent, the influence of stress-coping styles on turnover intent was significant. In more detail, the result was consistent with those of other studies in that employees’ stress-coping styles in the form of task-oriented problem-solving decreased their turnover intent (Folkman and Lazarus, 1980; Nicholls et al., 2012). However, their emotion- and avoidance-coping styles increased their turnover intent (Boyd et al., 2009; Shevaune, 2003). One can infer that task-coping styles are active strategies for resolving problems and reducing turnover intent, whereas emotion- and avoidance-coping styles heighten turnover intent by increasing emotional exhaustion. One key result obtained in this study is that those with a promotion focus used task-coping styles that decreased their turnover intent. Another aspect is that a prevention focus increased employees’ turnover intent by influencing their emotion- and avoidance-coping styles. This is a meaningful result because it verified Higgins’ (2000) theory that promotion focus concerns humans’ positive results and prevention focus concerns their negative results through its application to hotel employees.

In addition, in stressful situations, employees’ emotion-coping style resulted in a greater increase in turnover intent among those with fewer than 10 years of work experience than those with more than 10 years. This was partially consistent with the results of Goldenberg and Waddell (1990), Bennett et al. (1997) and Elahi and Apoorva (2012), who found that, compared to employees with a long tenure, those with a short tenure coped with stressful situations emotionally and, as a result, their turnover intent increased.

5.2 Theoretical implications This study examined the regulatory focus of employees working in five-star hotels to verify the different effects of employees’ regulatory focus on stress-coping styles and turnover intent. Theoretical implications of this study can be considered largely in the context of three aspects.

First, the characteristic propensity of the hotel industry was reflected by performing research targeting hotel employees. Studies to date have largely examined causal relationships between employees’ regulatory focus and their stress-coping style in organizations in the service industry. However, this study examined employees’ regulatory focus, stress-coping styles and turnover intent, which have not been investigated in the existing research on the hotel industry, using the regulatory focus theory that recently came into the spotlight. At this point, based on the theory that employee turnover decreases when employees are motivated by strategies corresponding to their regulatory focus, this study examined whether hotel employees’ promotion focus significantly influenced their task-coping style (positive stress-coping style) and whether their prevention focus had a significant effect on their emotion- and avoidance-coping styles (negative stress-coping styles). This study contributes to activating research on hotel employees’ regulatory focus. In particular, hotel employees – as members of the service industry – are likely to be exposed to stress; they often come into direct contact with customers because the occupational group performing emotional labor in this work situation is the hotel (Lee et al., 2012). Accordingly, compared to other industries, hotel employees are excessively forced to deal with expressed emotions (Lam and Chen, 2012). Thus, employees’ regulatory focus

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and an efficient coping style for stress in hotel employees’ job situations play an important role in reducing their turnover intent.

Second, regulatory focus was used as an important variable available for reducing employees’ stress and turnover intent. Most of the research has considered the difference based on character or value system as an individual characteristic. However, this study is significant for having performed research by using a characteristic variable dubbed regulatory focus. In particular, as the regulatory focus is a motivational variable that influences people’s emotions, thoughts and behavior, it functions as an important psychological mechanism that causes and perpetuates employees’ behavior within an organization. Through this study, this regulatory focus was considered to be the important variable in considering employees’ coping style and employees’ turnover intent. Also, applying an expanded regulatory focus theory, which has been so far focused on the consumer behavior dimension, to the context of employees within an organization was significant.

Third, the study considered causality between regulatory focus and stress-coping style and turnover intent. A noteworthy body of research involving regulatory focus has questioned whether a correlation between coping style and turnover intent exists. However, nothing in research has considered causality among three variables on the basis of employees’ psychological condition. The present study associated employees’ stress-coping styles with their regulatory focus and showed that different stress-coping styles might be derived using such regulatory focus and the resulting turnover intent might also be different. Therefore, the study results can provide a theoretical basis for understanding relationships among regulatory focus, stress-copying styles and turnover intent as such research is relatively lacking.

Finally, this study is also meaningful in that it applied the regulatory focus theory centered on customer behaviors to employees and verified the moderating effect of tenure between coping styles and turnover intent.

5.3 Practical implications Most people dislike stress. They have their own coping styles given the occurrence of stress in a working situation. Which style do most people use to cope with stress? One person may have the choice of accepting risk to cope with a situation dubbed stress, while another may have a safer choice. The regulatory focus can be the representative motive theory to explain the behaviors of employees within organizations. Will there be a difference in coping method in a stressful situation based on employees’ regulatory focus? Also, will employees’ turnover intent vary depending on the style of coping with stress? This study has significant implications for practice. In short, based on the premise that individuals’ different regulatory focus leads to differing stress-coping styles and resulting differences in turnover intent, it is necessary to discriminatively apply employee assistance programs or job programs to each individual.

In conclusion, an individual enhances his/her motives and behaviors in pursuit of a strategy to conform more with his/her regulatory focus (Brenninkmeijer et al., 2010; Lockwood et al., 2002). The promotion focus is very similar to the positive emotion dubbed pleasure (Tamir, 2005); a pleasurable atmosphere encourages achievement and improvement to reduce turnover intent. On the other hand, for

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those with a strong prevention focus, it is necessary to introduce training programs to prepare them in advance so that they do not feel anxious and to induce them to cope with stress actively. To this end, if the prevention focus is significant, the tendency to be afraid of and avoid the dangerous situation becomes evident. Thus, promotion of an emotion-related program is considered likely to contribute to positive job attitudes so that employees can work in a comfortable atmosphere with emotional stability. In addition, as the Myers–Briggs type indicator and Big Five model are used for employees’ training and education or development, seeking measures to assess and use the regulatory focus that affects their behavior is important. Furthermore, given that employees with a high prevention focus negatively cope with stressful situations, hotels should devise a continuous participation program designed to help employees develop positive attitudes regarding their work situation through stress control that is offered by professional counselors.

This study also verified that stress-coping styles have different influences on turnover intent. Employees’ task-coping style, characterized by the reasonable resolution of and response to problems through tasks, negatively affected turnover intent, whereas the emotion- and avoidance-coping style positively influenced turnover intent. Thus, when faced with a stressful situation, those with a task-coping style oriented toward problem-solving adapt more swiftly to the situation than those who emotionally avoid the problem or emotionally respond to it; accordingly, the former’s possibility of engaging in negative behaviors decreases. These results suggest that active task oriented stress-coping styles can reduce turnover intent and induce job satisfaction. Thus, hotels should seek to conduct appropriate stress-coping training at the organizational level, provide styles their employees can use to cope with and overcome stress effectively and adopt styles to reduce negative behavior and turnover intent. To achieve these goals, managers should provide continuous exchange or feedback so that their subordinates can cope with stressful situations in a positive way. More specifically, they should understand that stress is not a negative thing and, if efficiently managed, it can act as an important factor in reducing job transfer. Virtual education using video or other the Internet media can be provided to enhance employees’ efficiency in coping with stress. In addition, it is important to manage stress to manage performance. Employees who manage stress efficiently can be selected as role models, and sufficient incentives or rewards can be provided to them so that other employees are motivated. Furthermore, for strategic stress management, supporting employees’ cultural or leisure life by, for example, activating sports clubs or introducing mentoring or coaching programs is necessary. In particular, there is a need to offer opportunities for employees to directly select a mentor or coaching object, not a uniform mentoring or coaching program.

According to the results of the present study, employees whose tenure was shorter than 10 years had higher turnover intent than those with longer tenure. Based on such a result, hotels should offer training in stress coping and emotion management to those with tenure shorter than 10 years, as well as practical advice so that they can devote themselves to their organization and perform their duties in such a way that they find gratification in their employment.

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5.4 Limitations and future research Despite its important implications, this study has several limitations that need to be addressed. First, the sample consisted of hospitality industry employees working at five-star hotels. In addition, the sampling rate of employees at FOH departments who directly contact customers among hotel employees was relatively small. Also, the sample of this study is located in the East Asia (in South Korea), which likely reflected the characteristic propensity in the oriental culture that tries to pursue avoidant behavior rather than being dangerous and challenging in the case of synchronizing it with the prevention focus (Oh and Ha, 2010). Therefore, the generalizability of the results might be limited to employees in particular categories. A future study that comparatively analyzes hotels and companies in other areas of the hospitality industry would be meaningful. Second, regulatory focus might result in differences due to cultural differences (Lockwood et al., 2005; Uskul et al., 2009); therefore, it is necessary to take these differences into consideration according to the respondents’ various cultural spheres. Third, the sample size of female employees was too small, making it difficult to generalize the results. Fourth, because of the self-report survey used in this study, limitations might exist due to common method bias or the lack of objectivity. Fifth, because of the lack of prior studies examining regulatory focus and stress-coping styles, this study inferred association between personality characteristics and regulatory focus, thereby complementing its hypotheses on stress-coping styles. Therefore, future research examining associations between personality characteristics and regulatory focus and looking at different stress-coping styles is suggested. Sixth, considering the significant relationship with regulatory focus, stress-coping strategy and turnover intention according to emotional labor level of being perceived by employees is considered to be a likely significant attempt as a follow-up research. This study only examined employees’ regulatory focus, stress-coping styles and personal turnover intent; future research should deeply examine associations between the variables and organizations’ actual management performance.

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Corresponding author Hye Hyun Yoon can be contacted at: [email protected]

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