Examining firefighter and police officers’ trust and service quality: What resources matter?

Abstract

We present and test a model examining the role of organizational and psychological resources that enable employees’ high-quality service provision in public safety jobs. Through a two-study design conceptualized in the principle of reciprocity of social exchange theory, we recruited 120 firefighters and 119 police officers and found that service quality was positively associated with their trust in the administration, training, and staffing sufficiency. We also found that police officers’ prosocial motivation, as a psychological resource, amplifies the relationship between trust in administration and service quality. The beneficial role of prosocial motivation in police officers’ service quality appears to counter recent research suggesting that prosocial motivation has a dark side in demanding contexts. Our findings contribute to and highlight essential connections between distinct resources that positively impact the service quality of firefighters and police officers in dangerous and emotionally demanding job roles.