You are Rude, so I Must Suffer? Exploring Casino Dealers’ Work Stress and Maladaptive Behaviors Caused by Uncivil Customers

Few studies focused on how employees use maladaptive after-work behaviors to cope with work stress in the gaming sector. Although customer incivility is a typical stressor, its destructive effects remain largely unknown. This study aims to fill the research gap by investigating stress coping mechanisms of frontline casino employees within the framework of the maladaptive coping theory. We obtained 575 valid responses from frontline casino employees working in six gaming companies in Macao. Our analysis confirmed that the casino dealers perceive customer incivility and emotional labor as stressors and adopt maladaptive behaviors as a means of coping with work stress. We also found that employees’ marital status or gender are moderators. The study results have implications for future research on negative coping with work stress.