Satisfaction with service recovery: Perceived justice and emotional responses Ana Belén del Río-Lanza a, ⁎, Rodolfo Vázquez-Casielles a , Ana M a Díaz-Martín b a Universidad de Oviedo, Spain b Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain abstract article info Article history: Received 1 November 2006 Received in revised form 1 April 2008 Accepted 1 September 2008 Keywords: Service failure Service recovery Perceived justice Emotions Consumer satisfaction This study examines the relationship between perceived justice, emotions, and satisfaction during service recovery (SR). The current research work proposes a model analyzing the direct effects of justice on satisfaction, along with its indirect effects, via emotions. A field study that captures consumer perceptions of actual SR situations in the cellular-telephone sector tests the model. The paper investigates the relative effects of the dimensions of perceived justice on satisfaction and the emotions triggered by SR. Results indicate that all three justice dimensions affect satisfaction, with procedural justice showing the strongest relative influence, as well as being the only dimension affecting the emotions. Results also show that negative emotions mediate the effects of justice on satisfaction with SR (SSR). © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Factors outside the individual organization's control influence the production and delivery of services. Many services are heavily people- based, possibly requiring various interactions with the consumers and/or the coordination of different service providers. As a result, the quality of service delivery depends often on the attitude and behavior of front-line employees, the expectations of customers, and even the behavior of other customers (Patterson et al., 2006). In addition, production and consumption of many services generally occur at the same time, meaning that little or no possibility of supervision exists before the service delivery. Thus, although service firms try to offer a high level of quality in their activities, they will not be able to eliminate mistakes entirely during service delivery. Even the most customer-oriented organization with the strongest quality program is unlikely to be able to eliminate all service failures. SR is a moment of truth for the firm, being critical both for satisfying its customers and strengthening its relationships with them (Blodgett et al., 1997; Smith and Bolton, 2002). SR comprises the actions that a service provider takes to respond to service failures and the process by which the firm attempts to rectify the failure (Kelley and Davis, 1994). This study examines the relationship between perceived justice, emotions and satisfaction during SR. An investigation of these issues is important for various reasons. First, failures themselves do not necessarily lead to customer dissatisfaction, since most consumers accept that things can some- times go wrong, particularly in services. In contrast, the organization's response (or lack of response) to the failure is the most likely cause of dissatisfaction. Thus, Bhandari et al. (2007) argue that SSR is a critical component in the overall evaluation of service experiences. Spreng et al. (1995) show that consumer SSR has a greater impact on overall satisfaction than any other individual aspect of the outcome of the service delivery. Maxham and Netemeyer (2002) find that satisfaction with recovery has a positive influence on overall firm satisfaction and on word-of-mouth intent. Therefore, understanding the factors that determine SSR is of great interest. Second, the research line that considers that perceived justice is a driver of emotions is relatively new in the SR context. Chebat and Slusarczyk (2005) and Schoefer and Ennew (2005) are two funda- mental contributions but much is still unknown. The current study seeks to extend the existing literature analyzing the direct effects of justice on satisfaction with SR, along with its indirect effects, via emotions. Combining justice theory and cognitive appraisal theory, Schoefer and Ennew (2005) explain these effects. However, they exclusively analyze the role of perceived justice as a cognitive appraisal dimension that elicits emotions during SR encounters. This paper also investigates the relative effects of the dimensions of justice on two important concepts: satisfaction and emotions during SR. Chebat and Slusarczyk (2005) observe that the specific effects of the three justice dimensions on customer loyalty are quite different from each other. But work analyzing whether the justice dimensions also affect satisfaction with SR differently is absent for the literature. Maxham and Netemeyer (2002) analyze the effects of perceived justice on satisfaction with SR, but without examining the relative effects of the justice dimensions or considering the emotions as a variable mediating the relationship between perceived justice and satisfaction. Several authors stress that consumers' emotions during SR encounters influence their SSR (Menon and Dubé, 2004; Schoefer Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 775–781 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 985 10 28 27; fax: +34 985 10 37 08. E-mail address: adelrio@uniovi.es (A.B. del Río-Lanza). 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2008.09.015 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research