Employee AI role-threat appraisal and dysfunctional customer behavior in hotels: a socioemotional pathway through emotional authenticity and fairness

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into hospitality service operations, it influences not only task performance but also the emotional dynamics of frontline encounters. This study investigates how employees’ AI role-threat appraisal, defined as employees’ anticipatory appraisal that AI integration may threaten, disrupt, or diminish their frontline service role, is associated with dysfunctional customer behavior through a socioemotional process involving surface acting, perceived emotional authenticity, and interactional justice. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, emotional labor theory, and organizational justice theory, we test a serial mediation model using dyadic field data from matched employee – customer pairs in hospitality settings. Results indicate that AI role-threat appraisal is positively associated with employees’ reliance on surface acting, which is negatively related to guests’ perceptions of emotional authenticity; lower authenticity is, in turn, associated with lower interactional justice and greater dysfunctional customer behavior. The indirect association is weaker when AI visibility is high and among customers with greater technological literacy but stronger in emotionally intense encounters. The findings contribute to hospitality marketing and management scholarship by clarifying how threat-oriented employee appraisals of AI integration may reshape frontline emotional performance and guest fairness perceptions.