Ethnocultural empathy among frontline hospitality and tourism employees

Abstract

The current study outlines the measurement of frontline employees' guest-directed ethnocultural empathy abilities in the context of Islamic hospitality in Iran. To this end, nine 4-and 5-star hotels located in three of the country's main cities were sampled for examining their frontline employees by a modified version of Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy. To test this scale and analyze the data, the variance-based technique of partial least squares structural equation modeling was selected. Out of the scale's dimensions, Empathic Feeling and Expression exerted the strongest influence on the ethnocultural empathy levels, followed by Empathic Perspective Taking, Acceptance of Cultural Differences, and Empathic Awareness. These underlying four dimensions accounted for more than two thirds of the total variance of ethnocultural empathy. This, along with the substantiation of convergent validity, discriminant validity, high reliability, and satisfactory model indices, indicates a high contribution of the above dimensions and their modified items to the quantitatively measurement of frontline employees' competencies to empathize with guests of other racial or ethnic groups. Hotel managers can take advantage of this scale to identify any likely weaknesses with such competencies in order to improve them based on the priorities that various guest segments seek. © 2019 Cognizant, LLC.