Improving the user stickiness becomes increasingly valued, due to the severe user churn of livestreaming services. Previous studies pay much attention to the influencing factors of technology on user stickiness, ignoring the emotional factors. This study examined the impact of the emotional labor of network anchors (deep acting vs. surface acting) on user stickiness in the context of livestreaming service. We extended prior findings in three ways. The results of Study 1 (i.e., questionnaire method, 305 livestreaming users, and 56.4% females) demonstrated that the emotional labor of network anchor positively influenced user stickiness, and immersion experience plays a mediating role. The results of Study 2 (i.e., situational simulation method, 203 volunteers, and 54.09% females) demonstrated that the deep acting strategies of emotional labor had a stronger effect when compared with surface acting strategies. The results of Study 3 (i.e., situational simulation method, 235 volunteers, and 51.9% females) demonstrated that the effect of emotional labor on user stickiness was stronger for the users with prevention focus compared with promotion focus. Based on the perspective of emotional labor, this study extends the previous research on user stickiness and is valuable for guiding the practice of livestreaming services.

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the effect of frontline employees' emotional labor (surface acting vs. deep acting) on customer satisfaction and the moderating role of responsibility attributions in the situation of robot service failure.Design/methodology/approachThe scenario-based experimental method was designed to perform hypothesis testing and SPSS was used to analyze the data from the 363 questionnaires collected.FindingsThe results indicate that (1) employees' emotional labor recovery has a double-edged sword effect. Deep acting improves customer satisfaction, while surface acting undermines the effectiveness of service recovery and leaves customer satisfaction below previous levels. (2) Customers' responsibility attributions for service failure moderate the effect of service recovery.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the role of frontline employees' emotional labor in robot service failure contexts, which not only enriches and expands the relevant literature in this domain, but also deepens the understanding of how emotional labor and responsibility attribution effect the customer satisfaction.

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While central environmental inspection (CEI), a sort of campaign-style enforcement, has been adopted in China to tackle environmental issues, it is unclear if the CEI has promoted industrial structure upgrading. Based on a sample of 279 cities from 2011 to 2018 in China, this study investigates the impact of CEI on industrial structure upgrading and its intrinsic mechanism using the difference-in-differences approach (DID). The results reveal that 1) CEI significantly promoted industrial structure upgrading. 2) Local government environmental attention played a mediating role between CEI and industrial structure upgrading. 3) Heterogeneity analysis revealed that the effect of CEI on industrial structure upgrading differed significantly with regional discrepancies and the officials’ promotion motivation. Specifically, the CEI had greater effects on the eastern region and those cities whose officials have a strong promotion motivation. This study indicates that the central government should continue to promote routine inspection, special inspection, and look-back mechanism construction, thus enhancing the sustainability of the industrial structure upgrading effect. Overall, this study contributes to industrial structure upgrading theoretical research and offers useful insights into the environmental governance of emerging countries.