Is strong more vulnerable? An empirical investigation of psychological contract formation, violation, and customer reactions
结合心理契约理论与认知评价理论，通过两个在线情景实验，研究了心理契约强度如何通过违背、背叛感和愤怒影响顾客对服务失败的反应，并发现失败原因（顾客过错还是品牌过错）会调节这些效应。
The authors combine the psychological contract theory with the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions to systematically examine how psychological contract breach affects customer reactions to service failures. In service encounters, customers may perceive a discrepancy between what the brand has promised and what they have received, leading to breach that could potentially evoke feelings of violation and result in retaliatory behaviors. Two online scenario-based experiments reveal that 1) breach and subsequent feelings of betrayal mediate the impact of the strength of psychological contracts on anger in response to service failures, and that 2) breach, betrayal, and anger mediate the impacts of the strength of psychological contracts on partner quality inferences and negative word-of-mouth communication intentions, with the effects being moderated by the reason for the failure (customer fault versus brand fault). These results indicate that managing psychological contracts can help mitigate negative reactions to service failures.