Territorial Behaviours and Fellow Customers’ Expectations of Employee Responses in the Casual Dining Environment

Abstract

There is an inclination of customers to show a high level of territorial behaviours and rejection, causing intruders and observers to experience different emotions and expectations in the commercial service environment, particularly the casual dining environment, with minimal behavioural norms and standards. There have been several studies that deal specifically with territorial behaviours in restaurants, cafes and similar ‘third place’ spaces measuring emotions of observing customers, but not measuring their expectations. It leads to the question of whether observing customers expect employee intervention in the territorial rejection of intruders in a dining environment. This research examined the influence of observed rejection, the perceived similarity of the rejected intruder and perceived crowding on desired employee intervention in a dining environment using the experimental vignette method (EVM), drawing from the other-customer-perception (OCP) framework, social projection and deontic justice theory. Forty diners provided responses to three 7-point-scale questions for a randomly assigned one vignette from a total of eight vignettes using an online survey link. Data obtained were subjected to full factorial MANOVA. The results of this study did not support a direct or interaction effect of independent factors on observing customers’ expectations of employee responses. This suggests that observing customers do not expect employee intervention for the territorial rejections of others. Therefore, other factors possibly prevent forming such expectations in territorial rejection situations.