The Dark Side of Customer Participation: When Customer Participation in Service Co-Development Leads to Role Stress
研究了顾客参与服务共创可能带来的角色压力（包括角色冲突、角色超载和角色模糊），以及这种压力如何降低顾客满意度和参与价值，并发现其影响因任务类型和受益对象而异。
While numerous studies have examined the benefits of customer participation (CP), understanding of the dark side of involving customers in service firms’ processes is limited. This study proposes that the changing role of customers who actively participate in service co-development can cause role stress and negative feelings, which may, in turn, reduce customer satisfaction and the perceived value of participation. We develop and test a comprehensive role theory–based framework for CP-role stress. Using a video-based experiment, behavioral lab experiment, and field study, we find that greater CP leads to heightened role stress including role conflict, role overload, and role ambiguity. These adverse effects occur contingent on customers’ prior participation experience and firm-provided support. Furthermore, role stress effects vary across service co-development types depending on (a) the scope of the task (i.e., open task, closed task) and (b) the beneficiary of participation (i.e., customer, general market). Specifically, adverse effects are stronger for open than for closed tasks, and they also tend to be stronger when the beneficiary is the general market rather than the individual customer. These findings emphasize the need for more cross-context theorizing in CP research. Managers should consider these adverse effects and implement measures that reduce role stress.