International Journal of Hospitality Management 37 (2014) 171–179
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Hospitality Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman
How risky are services? An empirical investigation on the antecedents
and consequences of perceived risk for hotel service
Jin Sun ∗
Department of Marketing, School of Business, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, PR China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Keywords:
Perceived risk
Company reputation
Face consciousness
Risk aversion
Word-of-mouth
Switching intention
a b s t r a c t
Previous research does not systematically investigate the antecedents and consequences of perceived
risk for services in emerging markets. The present research aims to fill this void in the literature and
examines the determinants and consequences of consumer risk perceptions for an experience service,
hotel service. The present research models the antecedents at both the firm (company reputation and
perceived price) and individual consumer (risk aversion and face consciousness) levels, and the consequences comprise word-of-mouth communication and switching intention. Though perceived risk is a
multidimensional construct, past research tends to operationalize risk narrowly as either performance
or financial risk. The author overcomes this limitation by studying perceived risk at the component
level, and examines psychological, social, performance and financial risks separately. The results of a
survey on Chinese consumers who have purchased hotel service recently indicate that both firm-level
and individual-level antecedents directly influence perceived risk. While psychological and social risks
positively affect word-of-mouth, they do not have significant influence on switching intention. In addition, performance risk increases switching intention but decreases word of mouth. The author discussed
the theoretical and...