How do tourists with disabilities respond to service failure? An application of affective events theory

Abstract Service failures and complaints have been topics where there is an increasing interest among researchers as well as practitioners and it has been thoroughly examined in relation to the general traveling public.But this is not the case for tourists with disabilities.Therefore, the aim of the current research is to examine the relationship of service failure with complaint behavior based on the Affective Events Theory.An on-site survey was administered to collect data from Koreans with disabilities living in South Korea, and a total of 283 responses were used for data analysis. The findings showed that emotional evaluation had a significant relationship with regard to explaining cognitive evaluation, core service failure, and interpersonal service failure respectively. Emotional evaluation showed a positive relationship with complaint behavior. These findings provide insight regarding ways to provide better services for tourists with disabilities and for strategic planning and marketing purposes.