Flight Attendants’ Emotional Labor and Exhaustion in the Taiwanese Airline Industry

Few research studies have discussed the two variables of emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, and even fewer have examined flight attendants as the research subject. The current study employed a questionnaire method to examine 353 Taiwanese flight attendants’ feelings about emotional labor, the status of their emotional exhaustion, and the relationship between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. The research results indicate that: 1) while the degree of emotional labor operating on female flight attendants is on the medium to high side, the attendants’ perception of emotional exhaustion is only medium; 2) female flight attendants’ emotional labor has a significant positive correlation with their emotional exhaustion; and 3) among the perspectives of emotional labor, the qualities of “deep emotional masking” and “multiformity” have a significant predictive effect on emotional exhaustion.