Emotional Labor in Korean Local Government: Testing the Consequences of Situational Factors and Emotional Dissonance

Abstract

The study of emotional labor in public administration has a strong foundation. Emotional labor scales have been operationalized that measure emotion work, personal efficacy, type of acting, and positive/negative display rules. Less is known about how public employees are affected by the frequency, attentiveness, and variety of emotional display, and by emotional dissonance. A survey of local government employees in South Korea is used to analyze the consequences of these factors for job stress, burnout, and job satisfaction. These factors are found to affect the dependent variables in different ways.