Small acts of disrespect from a supervisor can be easy to dismiss as part of a difficult working day. In customer-facing tourism jobs, however, repeated discourtesy from someone with authority may carry consequences that extend beyond hurt feelings. New research suggests that perceived supervisor incivility is associated with emotional exhaustion and several distinct forms of employee withdrawal.
A peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports on 3 October 2026 examined 253 frontline tourism employees in China. The researchers tested whether perceived supervisor incivility was associated with turnover intention, service sabotage and psychological withdrawal through emotional exhaustion, and whether employees’ power distance orientation changed the strength of the relationship between incivility and exhaustion.
Why low-intensity mistreatment can matter
Workplace incivility refers to comparatively low-intensity behaviour that violates norms of mutual respect, often without an unambiguous intention to cause harm. In practice, it can include dismissive, rude or discourteous treatment. The ambiguity matters because an isolated interaction may appear minor, yet repeated exposure can still consume psychological resources.
The problem may be particularly important when the source is a supervisor. Frontline tourism employees must manage customer interactions while operating within a hierarchy in which supervisors influence schedules, evaluations, work assignments and access to organisational resources. That combination gives seemingly modest interpersonal behaviour a potentially wider organisational significance.
The authors framed emotional exhaustion as a key psychological mechanism. Rather than assuming that incivility translates directly into one outcome, they tested whether employees who perceive greater supervisor incivility also report greater emotional exhaustion, and whether that exhaustion is associated with multiple ways of disengaging from work.
The study followed 253 frontline tourism employees
The researchers collected survey data from 253 frontline tourism employees in China. They analysed the proposed relationships using partial least squares structural equation modelling, or PLS-SEM. This approach allowed them to estimate a network of relationships among perceived supervisor incivility, emotional exhaustion, power distance orientation and the three withdrawal outcomes.
The outcomes were deliberately broader than simply asking whether workers wanted to resign. Turnover intention captured thoughts about leaving the organisation. Psychological withdrawal represented mental or emotional disengagement from work. Service sabotage captured behaviour that can undermine the service encounter itself. Studying the outcomes together therefore offered a wider view of how strained employees may distance themselves from their jobs.
Power distance orientation was included as a potential boundary condition. This reflects the extent to which an individual accepts unequal distributions of authority and status. The researchers asked whether the relationship between supervisor incivility and emotional exhaustion differed according to employees’ orientation toward hierarchy.
Incivility was associated with emotional exhaustion
The structural analysis supported the study’s central pattern. Higher perceived supervisor incivility was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion, in turn, was associated with higher turnover intention, greater service sabotage behaviour and greater psychological withdrawal.
This is important because the three outcomes represent different organisational risks. An employee can contemplate leaving without immediately reducing service quality. Another may remain employed while psychologically disengaging. A third may respond in ways that compromise the customer experience. The findings indicate that emotional exhaustion was statistically connected with all three forms of withdrawal in the model.
The study also found that power distance orientation positively moderated the relationship between perceived supervisor incivility and emotional exhaustion. In other words, the incivility-exhaustion association was stronger at higher levels of power distance orientation. That result complicates a simple assumption that greater acceptance of hierarchy necessarily protects employees from the psychological consequences of poor supervisory treatment.
What the findings suggest for tourism businesses
Tourism organisations depend heavily on frontline employees to translate the brand promise into an actual customer experience. The new findings suggest that interpersonal conduct inside the organisation may therefore have consequences that reach beyond internal morale. When exhaustion is associated with service sabotage and withdrawal, supervisory behaviour becomes relevant to both employee well-being and service management.
The practical implication is not that every tense interaction will cause an employee to leave or undermine a customer encounter. Rather, organisations may benefit from treating respectful supervision as a management capability rather than a purely personal virtue. Leadership development, clear behavioural expectations and credible channels for reporting persistent incivility may help organisations identify problems before they become normalised.
The moderation result also suggests that workplace culture deserves attention. Employees differ in how they understand and respond to authority. A highly hierarchical environment should not be assumed to make discourteous supervisory behaviour harmless. If anything, the study indicates that individual orientations toward hierarchy can shape how strongly incivility is associated with exhaustion.
The results are associations, not proof of causation
The study has important limitations. It used a cross-sectional survey design, meaning the variables were measured within the same broad period rather than manipulated experimentally or tracked through a long longitudinal sequence. The analysis can therefore identify statistical relationships consistent with the proposed framework, but it cannot establish that supervisor incivility caused emotional exhaustion or that exhaustion subsequently caused withdrawal behaviour.
Self-reported measures can also share common sources of variance. Employees who feel exhausted may perceive workplace interactions differently, and unmeasured organisational conditions could influence both supervisory relationships and withdrawal. The sample was drawn from frontline tourism employees in China, so the magnitude and cultural pattern of the relationships should not automatically be generalised to every country, occupation or organisational setting.
Future research could strengthen causal interpretation by following employees over time, combining employee reports with supervisor or organisational records, and testing interventions designed to reduce incivility. Replication across countries with different workplace hierarchies would also help clarify the role of power distance orientation.
A wider lesson about everyday management
The study adds to a growing body of evidence that workplace relationships do not need to involve extreme abuse to matter. Low-intensity disrespect can be organisationally relevant when it comes from a person with authority and occurs in jobs that already demand substantial emotional labour.
For tourism employers, the central message is practical: employee withdrawal is not a single event that begins when someone submits a resignation. It can include psychological disengagement and behaviour that affects service delivery long before an employee formally leaves. Understanding the emotional exhaustion that sits between workplace experiences and these outcomes may offer organisations an earlier point for intervention.
Source Information
Study: Ma, Z., Asif, M., Shahzad, M. F., Ersoy, A., Shahbaz, M. et al. Supervisor incivility and employee withdrawal in the tourism sector.
Journal: Scientific Reports
Published: 3 October 2026
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-74006-4
Study design: Cross-sectional survey of 253 frontline tourism employees in China, analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.
