In service settings, customer misbehavior is defined as norm-violating acts that constitute a specific form of negative customer deviance, such as verbal hostility and personal insults (Fan & Wang, 2022). Under prevailing customer-centric norms, employers often pressure their staff to tolerate such acts without providing them with adequate support (Park & Kim, 2020). Repeated exposure to this misbehavior inflicts emotional harm, depletes psychological resources, and is related to detrimental outcomes, including burnout, reduced organizational commitment, and poorer service quality (Fan & Wang, 2022). Moreover, it can trigger work withdrawal, a passive form of disengagement that results in high hidden costs for organizations (Tu & Jiang, 2022). Although researchers have established the presence of these negative effects, there are two key gaps in the literature. First, researchers have primarily explained the effect of customer misbehavior on frontline employees through affective and stress pathways, such as emotional exhaustion, negative mood, rumination, and perceptions of injustice (Chi et al., 2015; M. Wang et al., 2013), while giving limited attention to motivational and self-evaluative resources. Thus, integrating basic psychological needs satisfaction and core self-evaluation may clarify why customer misbehavior is associated with frontline employees’ work withdrawal. Second, research on boundary conditions has focused more on individual and organizational factors than on job design (Koopmann et al., 2015; Park & Kim, 2020). Examining job routinization may therefore extend understanding of when customer misbehavior is more strongly associated with withdrawal behavior. To address these research gaps, I developed and tested a conceptual model to examine the relationship between customer misbehavior and frontline salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior, incorporating the mediating roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction and core self-evaluation, and the moderating role of job routinization.

Customer misbehavior, which is perceived as a form of interpersonal unfairness, is likely to be positively associated with salespeople’s work withdrawal because of its high frequency of occurrence and the power imbalance between customer and salesperson (Park & Kim, 2020). Misbehavior by the customer may function as a controlling stressor that is associated with the salesperson’s withdrawal tendencies through three mechanisms: undermining basic psychological needs and fostering a perception of unfairness (Xu et al., 2018), causing motivational alienation that is related to self-protection (Zhang, 2019), and activating strategies to cope with or reduce stress that result in physical or psychological withdrawal (Tu & Jiang, 2022). The power imbalance between customer and salesperson intensifies this process, as the disadvantaged salesperson is unable to confront the customer directly, thereby making covert work withdrawal an alternative coping strategy that serves as an escape and a form of retaliation. Therefore, I proposed my first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Customer misbehavior will be positively associated with work withdrawal among frontline salespeople.

Basic psychological needs, comprising autonomy, competence, and relatedness, are central to individual motivation and well-being (Trépanier et al., 2015). Autonomy reflects the desire for volitional action, competence involves feeling effective in one’s environment, and relatedness pertains to experiencing meaningful connections. Customer misbehavior (e.g., unreasonable demands, verbal abuse) significantly hinders satisfaction of these needs by making salespeople feel oppressed, undermining their sense of professional competence, and diminishing positive social interactions (Park & Kim, 2020). Consequently, the customer’s misbehavior has a negative impact on satisfaction of the salesperson’s basic psychological needs. Conversely, satisfying these needs enhances the individual’s intrinsic motivation, well-being, and performance while reducing emotional exhaustion and deviance (Van den Broeck et al., 2016). Specifically, satisfaction of the need for autonomy promotes engagement, satisfaction of the need for competence boosts confidence, and satisfaction of the relatedness need fosters affective commitment, collectively decreasing the likelihood of work withdrawal behavior (Greguras & Diefendorff, 2009). Therefore, I proposed my next hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Satisfaction of basic psychological needs will mediate the relationship between customer misbehavior and work withdrawal behavior among frontline salespeople.

Core self-evaluation refers to individuals’ fundamental assessment of their own abilities and values. It is a higher order construct composed of self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability, with emotional stability reflecting the low pole of the neuroticism trait (Judge et al., 1997). Customer misbehavior may be negatively associated with salespeople’s self-evaluation through two main pathways: First, as an external stressor, core self-evaluation has been linked to negative emotions like anxiety and helplessness, which decrease job satisfaction and self-confidence (Chi et al., 2015). Second, self-evaluation conveys negative feedback, such as doubting one’s competence or showing disrespect, which leads the salesperson to internalize the customer’s criticisms and lowers their self-assessment. For frontline sales staff, such experiences can foster feelings of disrespect, threaten their professional identity, and create occupational stigma, all of which contribute to depleting the vital personal resource of core self-evaluation (Li et al., 2025), and motivating them to conserve their remaining resources. This pattern may be associated with defensive, minimal work effort and more frequent work withdrawal behavior (Abubakar et al., 2017). Therefore, I proposed the next hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: Frontline salespeople’s core self-evaluation will mediate the relationship between customer misbehavior and salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior.

Basic psychological needs satisfaction and core self-evaluation form a dynamic personal resource-building process. Core self-evaluation is heavily influenced by basic psychological needs satisfaction: Satisfaction of the need for autonomy enhances internal locus of control, satisfaction of the need for competence boosts self-efficacy, and satisfaction of the need for relatedness promotes self-esteem (Bu et al., 2017). Positive work experiences that satisfy these needs systematically strengthen core self-evaluation (Simões & Alarcão, 2014), whereas persistent frustration of needs is associated with self-doubt and lowered core self-evaluation. Combining Hypotheses 2 and 3, I proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: Satisfaction of basic psychological needs and core self-evaluation will play a chain mediating role between customer misbehavior and the work withdrawal behavior of frontline salespeople.

Job routinization is characterized by behavioral automaticity and procedural formalization, which reduce cognitive load and enable employees to allocate resources to emotional regulation (Koopmann et al., 2015). Customer misbehavior implies task execution failure by the salesperson, forcing them to consume additional resources to cope (Koopmann et al., 2015). High job routinization reduces task complexity, enables automatic and efficient service behaviors, and reduces work dilemmas (Fernández-Macías et al., 2023). Clear rules reduce the difficulty of problem solving, enhance salespeople’s confidence in addressing customer misbehavior, and compensate for resource depletion (M. Wang et al., 2011), so that the positive association between customer misbehavior and salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior will  be stronger when job routinization is low and weaker when job routinization is high. Therefore, I proposed my final hypothesis:

Hypothesis 5: Job routinization will moderate the relationship between customer misbehavior and the work withdrawal behavior of frontline salespeople.

The Human Research Committee of the School of Business Administration at Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy reviewed and approved this research (EA2025014). I employed a mixed-methods approach, combining online and offline data collection. For the offline component, I distributed 420 paper survey forms across 15 supermarkets, appliance stores, and cosmetics shops. For the online component, 280 electronic survey forms were disseminated via Wenjuanxing (https://www.wjx.cn). Of 700 forms that were distributed, 607 were returned (response rate = 86.7%). Subsequently, I excluded 44 invalid responses from the analysis, comprising 14 incomplete survey forms, nine with logical inconsistencies, and 21 with patterned responses (e.g., identical answers across five or more consecutive items). Thus, I retained 563 (80.4%) valid survey forms for analysis.

 

The demographic profile of the participants was as follows: 252 (44.8%) were men and 311 (55.2%) were women. As regards age distribution, 136 (24.2%) were aged 18–25 years, 307 (54.5%) were aged 26–35 years, 109 (19.4%) were aged 36–45 years, and 11 (2.0%) were aged over 45 years. Regarding work experience in a frontline sales position, 81 (14.4%) had less than 1 year of experience, 235 (41.7%) had 1–3 years, 162 (28.8%) had 4–6 years, and 85 (15.1%) had more than 6 years. In terms of level of education, 147 (26.1%) respondents had a high school or lower educational qualification, 289  (51.3%) were junior college graduates, 116 (20.6%) had an undergraduate degree, and 11 (2.0%) had a postgraduate or higher qualification.

I used established scales to measure the core variables. For those scales originally developed in English, I employed a back-translation procedure. Two bilingual researchers translated the items into Chinese, and two other bilingual researchers back-translated them into English. My research team compared the back-translated items with the original items and resolved discrepancies through discussion. We made minor wording adjustments to fit the frontline sales and service context. All variables were rated on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).

 

To assess customer misbehavior, I adopted the five-item scale developed by Shao and Skarlicki (2014). A sample item is “The customer shouted at me.”

 

To assess satisfaction of salespeople’s basic psychological needs, I used the revised 16-item Work-Related Basic Need Satisfaction Scale developed by Van den Broeck et al. (2010), which includes three dimensions: autonomy need satisfaction (six items, e.g., “At work, I feel that I can fully show my true self”), competence need satisfaction (four items, e.g., “I believe I am capable of doing this job”), and relatedness need satisfaction (six items, e.g. “At work, I have some close-colleague friends”). The fit of the second-order model was excellent, χ²/df = 1.89, comparative fit index (CFI) = .96, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = .95, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .05, standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = .04, 95% CI [0.03, 0.08]. The target coefficient was .92, indicating that the second-order factor effectively accounted for covariance among the first-order factors, consistent with the criterion proposed by Marsh and Hocevar (1985).

 

I drew on the 10-item measure developed by Du et al. (2012) to assess salespeople’s core self-evaluation (e.g., “I firmly believe that I can achieve success”).

 

I used the nine-item scale developed by Withey et al. (1983) to assess job routinization. A sample item is “My job is just a routine.”

 

To measure salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior, I used the five-item scale developed by Scott and Barnes (2011). A sample item is “I will have the idea of absenteeism.”

I used Mplus 8.0 and R Version 4.5.3 for data analysis.

I began the analysis with tests of reliability and convergent and discriminant validity, followed by an evaluation of structural model fit to ensure the theoretical framework was suitable for testing my hypotheses. Subsequently, I examined the proposed direct, mediating, and moderating effects.

I first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to assess the reliability and validity of all measurement constructs. The results indicated satisfactory convergent validity, with acceptable standardized factor loadings, composite reliability values, and average variance extracted (AVE) scores. Discriminant validity was supported by the Fornell–Larcker criterion, as the square roots of AVE for all constructs exceeded their interconstruct correlations. In addition, heterotrait–monotrait ratio of correlations values were below the conservative threshold of .85, and the bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals did not include zero, further supporting discriminant validity. These results are shown in Tables 1 and 2.

The model fit indices were χ²/df = 1.02, CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .01, SRMR = .02, indicating a good fit to the data.

To test the direct and mediating effects, I examined the total effect, direct effect, and three specific indirect effect paths in the theoretical model. As shown in Table 3, customer misbehavior was positively associated with salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior. In addition, the indirect paths through salespeople’s basic psychological needs satisfaction, core self-evaluation, and the sequential mediation path were supported by bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals. These results supported Hypotheses 1–4.

As shown in Table 4, the interaction between customer misbehavior and salespeople’s job routinization was statistically significant. As shown in Table 5, a simple slope analysis further indicated that the positive association between customer misbehavior and salespeople’s work withdrawal behavior was stronger when job routinization was low and weaker when job routinization was high (see Figure 1). This interaction pattern supported Hypothesis 5.

In this study I examined how customer misbehavior relates to work withdrawal among Chinese frontline salespeople, testing the independent and chain mediating roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction and core self-evaluation, as well as the moderating role of job routinization.

First, this study advances research on customer misbehavior beyond the prevailing stress- and affect-based perspectives. Consistent with prior studies showing that customer mistreatment elicits withdrawal-related reactions through negative affect, rumination, and emotional exhaustion, I found that customer misbehavior was positively associated with salespeople’s work withdrawal. I also identified two resource-based mechanisms: Satisfaction of basic psychological needs mediated the relationship of customer misbehavior with salespeople’s work withdrawal, suggesting that customer misbehavior undermines the salesperson’s needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are central to work motivation and psychological functioning. Core self-evaluation also served as a mediator of the relationship between customer misbehavior and salespeople’s work withdrawal, indicating that customer misbehavior may weaken the salesperson’s positive self-view. The results further showed a sequential resource loss process in which reduced satisfaction of basic psychological needs erodes core self-evaluation and subsequently promotes withdrawal behavior. This finding enriches conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018).

 

Second, unlike in previous research on individual traits and organizational support (X. Wang et al., 2019), this study has extended research on boundary conditions by introducing job routinization as a moderator of job design. The proposed moderating effect was supported. Specifically, customer misbehavior was less strongly associated with salespeople’s withdrawal behavior when their job routinization was higher. Drawing on work design theory, routinized tasks provide procedures, scripts, and predictability, and these features may help the salesperson manage difficult customer encounters (Humphrey et al., 2007). Thus, when the salesperson is faced with customer misbehavior, job routinization may function as a contextual resource for the salesperson, rather than the customer’s behavior being perceived as merely an alienating demand.

First, service organizations should treat customer misbehavior as a significant work stressor that can lead to employee withdrawal. Managers should establish clear reporting channels, supervisory intervention procedures, and support policies to help salespeople respond to inappropriate customer conduct. Second, managers should protect employees’ basic psychological needs. Providing frontline salespeople with appropriate discretion, conflict-handling training, and support from supervisors or coworkers can help them maintain their autonomy, competence, and relatedness after negative encounters with customers. Third, because the salesperson’s core self-evaluation accounts for part of the effect of customer misbehavior, rather than blaming the salesperson for customer aggression, managers should help them preserve a positive self-view through constructive feedback, recognition, coaching, and fair evaluation. Finally, job routinization can serve as a protective resource within work design. Clear service procedures, response scripts, and escalation rules may reduce uncertainty and weaken withdrawal tendencies; however, these routines should not be applied too rigidly. Managers should allow salespeople appropriate flexibility to exercise judgment and adapt their responses according to the specific customer situation and the severity of the misbehavior.

This study has two main limitations: First, the design was cross-sectional, which means that I could not determine causal relationships or the ongoing, cumulative effects of psychological processes (e.g., rumination). Future studies could employ multiwave, longitudinal, or daily diary methods and combine self-report data with objective organizational records (e.g., lateness, absenteeism) to enhance accuracy. Second, the sample was limited to Chinese service employees, and cultural factors (e.g., high power distance) and organizational policies may act as boundary conditions. Research is needed to replicate the model in different cultural and industry contexts, and cross-cultural studies should be conducted, taking into account individualism–collectivism and power distance to examine how these factors influence employee responses to customer misbehavior.

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