Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

Cheng, Ming; Zhu, Zhen

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241230504

Search platforms are contemporary digital services that create value on multi-sided markets through providing services to each side of their platforms—indexing contents for all website operators on the internet, placing pages and tracking performance for paid advertisers or sellers, and searching market offerings to match inquiries for web users. Search platforms are interested in developing strategies at the sponsored ad set level to optimize consumer clicks. Drawing literature supports from hospitality, search engine advertising, and product assortment areas, our study examines the relationships between search platforms’ paid ad strategies (in paid ad set size and set attractiveness) and consumer’s single or multiple clicks on the sponsored ad section. We empirically test the relationships in a multinomial logit modeling approach using a large-scale disaggregated, hotel-search dataset collected from a leading Chinese search engine. Our results suggest a positive but diminishing impact of paid ad set size on a consumer’s set selection and multiple click-through behavior. Our study also spotlights the distinct and often divergent moderating effects of two types of ad attractiveness, preference-based and social-based, on the relationship between paid ad set size and consumer responses. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of this research to search platforms and advertisers in hospitality alike.

Han, Saram; Mikhailova, Daria

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655231223364

Online hotel reviews on platforms like TripAdvisor are crucial in shaping customer choices and steering business strategies in the hospitality sector. However, the effectiveness of these platforms is partially hindered by the self-selection bias found in voluntary reviews. This bias can create false expectations and unsatisfactory experiences, mainly as the feedback generally comes from a non-representative group of self-motivated reviewers (SMRs). A common strategy to mitigate this bias is increasing the number of reviews through customer surveys, generating retailer-prompted reviews (RPRs). However, these RPRs, despite reducing selection bias, tend to lack the depth and insight of SMRs, resulting in a credibility gap and reduced representativeness. To address this, our study presents a novel approach using the propensity score adjustment (PSA) technique. This method leverages the distribution of RPRs to refine the accuracy of text data from SMRs, aiming to enhance the reliability and representativeness of online reviews. By combining the strengths of both RPRs and SMRs, we aim to create an online review environment that is both accurate and reliable. In conclusion, this research marks an important step toward improving online review platforms, aiming for a more transparent and trustworthy environment for reviews.

Jang, Youngki; Liu, Crocker H.; Weinbaum, David; Yehuda, Nir

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241230229

Relative to sales, the average operating lease commitments of hospitality firms are 4 times larger than those of other publicly traded firms. In response to the recently enacted accounting standards update No. 2016-02 (ASU 2016-02) that requires lessees to recognize operating leases on their balance sheet, hospitality firms decreased their use of operating leases, switching to shorter-term off-balance sheet leases. We find that this change did not have negative consequences on firm performance, shareholders, or employees. The only significant effect we do find is an improvement in credit ratings for firms that reduced operating leases in response to the new standard. Our findings are inconsistent with the concerns some hospitality managers and academics expressed prior to the introduction of the standard.

McGinley, Sean

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241276498

The labor market has recovered from the lows induced by pandemic-era lockdowns, and this study seeks to determine how that recovery influences hospitality turnover. Drawing on Control Theory and the Threat-Rigidity Hypothesis, moderated associations were proposed between career variety and turnover intentions and grit and turnover intentions. The observed results supported the proposed theoretical explanation of job insecurity moderating the associations. Given low levels of job insecurity, people high in career variety were more likely to harbor high levels of turnover intentions and those with high levels of grit were less likely to harbor high turnover intentions. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are also discussed.

Lakhani, Tashlin; Sherwyn, David; Wagner, Paul

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655231223369

The Supreme Court dropped several of its most anxiously awaited and controversial cases during the last week of June 2023. While two of the cases, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Students for Fair Admissions., Inc., v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, received most of the press, a third case will likely be the most consequential of the three for the hospitality industry. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, rejected a 25 year+ interpretation of a Supreme Court case defining employers’ obligations to accommodate religion. Because the Court released its Groff decision during the same week as the release of both 303 Creative and the Harvard cases, Groff was lost in the shuffle. However, we argue that Groff’s imprecise but radical change of what constitutes an undue hardship for religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will create confusion, may cause dissention, and will add to an already difficult labor market in hospitality and other industries. To support our proposition, this article examines (a) the development of religious accommodation law before 1977, (b) the 1977 Supreme Court case that the Groff Court rejected, (c) the subsequent precedent of that 1977 case, (d) the passing and development of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and then, (e) the effect of Groff.

Kim, Changhee; Shin, Jaeho; Yang, Hongsuk; Bang, Dohyung; Verma, Rohit

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241244703

The emergence of home-sharing services and technological advancements has transformed the lodging market, prompting strategic divergence for distinct brand positioning. Previous hospitality research primarily explored linear relationships between hotel brand strategy and performance, leaving a gap regarding the impact of brand strategy divergence on performance heterogeneity. In this respect, this study examined how hotel brands’ strategic divergence influences performance heterogeneity. By employing the bootstrap two-stage data envelopment analysis with customer satisfaction as an intermediate factor, this study computed service productivity and service effectiveness as performance measures. The results indicate significant differences in service productivity and effectiveness patterns based on brand strategy—upper-scale, lower-scale, or extended-stay-type positioning. Hotels cluster into “revenue-oriented” and “efficient provider” groups, revealing distinct performance polarization. Importantly, this polarization does not imply the inherent superiority of a specific strategy; rather, the findings suggest hotels may optimize performance structure based on their chosen strategy.

Zhang, Jinhua; Huang, Rong; Huang, Beilei; Xu, Tao; Zhao, Guoqing

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241226563

Dyadic leader–follower relationships play a significant role in sustainable development of labor-intensive and service-oriented organizations. The purpose of this study is to assess employees’ motivation and outcomes of developing and maintaining high-quality supervisor–subordinate guanxi in Chinese hotels. A survey was undertaken in four- or five-star hotels, with a total of 318 matched employees-supervisor completed responses used for data analysis, which was conducted using SPSS Statistics and SmartPLS. The study’s results show that affection and obligation significantly motivate employees to develop and maintain supervisor–subordinate guanxi, which in turn contributes to the desirable task performance delivery and supervisor autonomy support. Furthermore, the study confirms the mediating roles of supervisor–subordinate guanxi and task performance. This work extends guanxi research and is among the first to identify why hotel employees are motivated to develop and maintain high-quality supervisor–subordinate guanxi based on the contextualization of self-determination theory and Chinese cultural elements.

Meira, Jessica Vieira de Souza; Park, Jeong-Yeol; Kyle Hight, S.; Bufquin, Diego; Back, Robin M.

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241241472

Sexual harassment in the workplace remains one of the most significant issues affecting the hospitality sector today. In particular, scholars need to better understand why some employees choose to remain employed by a company despite experiencing such harassment. Drawing from appraisal theory and social exchange theory, the goal of this study is to investigate the mediating effects of negative emotions (i.e., shame and anger) on the relationship between sexual harassment and turnover intention, and the moderating effect of pay satisfaction on the relationship between such negative emotions and turnover intention. Data were collected from 500 full-time restaurant employees in the United States. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), all direct effects were supported, except for the impact of shame on turnover intention. Moreover, anger mediated the relationship between sexual harassment and turnover intention, and pay satisfaction moderated the relationship between anger and turnover intention. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed in detail.

Kim, Minji; Kim, Hyelin (lina); Ma, Zihui; Lee, Sooyeon

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241256588

Given the growing interest in healthy and sustainable consumption, organic food has gained much attention from restaurants and markets aiming to achieve a competitive advantage. As a new form of word of mouth, influencers’ endorsements help organic food marketers reach and attract potential consumers. However, little is known about the persuasiveness of influencer marketing in organic food settings. Drawing on source credibility theory, this study proposes influencer credibility as the key to influencer marketing and examines its impact on consumer responses. Using data from an online survey, structural equation modeling revealed a significant and positive relationship between all credibility dimensions (expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and interactivity) and perceived information quality leading to behavioral intention. Moreover, a significant moderation of herd behavior on the credibility information quality relationship was found. These findings will provide useful insights for organic food marketers in developing effective influencer marketing strategies.

Hoang, Giang; Luu, Tuan Trong; Yang, Mingjun

2024 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

doi: 10.1177/19389655241241471

In recent tourism and hospitality literature, there has been a surge in research endeavors that center on the construct of authentic leadership. Given this increasing interest, our study reviews the empirical studies on authentic leadership in tourism and hospitality to provide a comprehensive framework and research agenda of this leadership style in these contexts. Through a systematic selection process using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, we obtained a sample of 37 empirical studies. Following the content analysis approach, we analyzed and synthesized the research results from these studies. Our review makes several critical contributions to the literature. First, our study casts light upon the divergent conceptualizations and approaches used for defining and measuring authentic leadership in the tourism and hospitality literature, thereby enhancing the depth of understanding of this multifaceted construct. Second, we present an overview of the theoretical frameworks and research designs employed in this domain. Third, we present a nomological network of authentic leadership in tourism and hospitality, highlighting the outcomes, moderators, and mediators. Based on these findings, directions for further studies are suggested to address the identified gaps in the literature. We also proposed several practical implications for managers and firms in tourism and hospitality industries to help leaders effectively influence their employees through their authentic behavior.