Labors of love: service employees on customer participation Laee Choi Department of Marketing, Hasan School of Business, Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo, Colorado, USA, and Charles A. Lawry Division of Consumer Science, College of Health and Human Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA Abstract Purpose – Very few studies have considered how customer participation (CP) influences service employees’ well- being. CP may lead employees to engage in emotional labor strategies (surface/deep acting), which can elevate their job stress. Whereas surface acting involves falsifying emotions, deep acting involves empathizing with others. Therefore, the current article examines how these emotional labor strategies arise from CP and create job stress. Design/methodology/approach – Study 1 is an online survey of service employees’ wellbeing during CP (n 5 509). Study 2 compares service employees’ responses within hedonic and utilitarian service settings through a scenario-based experiment (n 5 440). PROCESS was used to analyze the data in both studies. Findings – First, study 1 supports that perceived CP increases job stress. Secondly, surface acting mediates the link between CP and job stress, but deep acting does not. Thereafter, Study 2 shows that the link between CP and job stress decreases as employee-customer identification (ECI) increases only during surface acting. Additionally, the impact of surface acting on job stress during CP is greater for hedonic services than utilitarian services, but there is no significant difference for deep acting. Originality/value – This article contributes an original perspective by comparing models of service employees’ responses to CP and job stress in hedonic versus utilitarian settings. Moreover, the intervening effects of ECI and emotional labor strategies on job stress, as demonstrated through these employee-facing models, offer added value to the CRM and co-creation literature. Keywords Customer participation, Emotional labor strategy, Job stress, Employee-customer identification, Hedonic services, Utilitarian services Paper type Research paper Introduction Researchers and practitioners in the services domain have suggested that customers can be valuable resource providers and meaningful co-creators of service experiences (Arnould, 2006; Lusch and Vargo, 2014). In previous studies, customer participation (CP) has been defined as “the extent to which customers provide resources in the form of time and/or effort, information, and co-production for product and service consumption” (Hsieh et al., 2004, p. 190). Within this purview, several researchers have argued that CP confers benefits on service organizations and customers from various angles (Auh et al., 2007; Chan et al., 2010). Specifically, CP encourages service teams to view customers as “partial” employees, which has been shown to improve service quality, knowledge production and innovativeness within service organizations (Mills and Morris, 1986). By extension, customers gain economic value (i.e. improved service quality, customization and increased control) and relational value (i.e. senses of enhanced social status, relationship quality and affiliation) from service organizations (Chan et al., 2010; Dholakia et al., 2004; Choi et al., 2019). In addition to supplying customers with added value, CP may increase the number and intensity of touchpoints during face-to-face service encounters. In essence, frontline service employees must support and monitor customers’ participating behaviors while continuing to deliver core offerings. This balancing act may not always generate positive workplace experiences Service employees on customer participation The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2055-6225.htm Received 9 January 2020 Revised 26 May 2020 4 August 2020 Accepted 21 September 2020 Journal of Service Theory and Practice © Emerald Publishing Limited 2055-6225 DOI 10.1108/JSTP-01-2020-0006