Territorial Behaviours and Fellow Customers’ Expectations of Employee Responses in the Casual Dining Environment

There is an inclination of customers to show a high level of territorial behaviours and rejection, causing intruders and observers to experience different emotions and expectations in the commercial service environment, particularly the casual dining environment, with minimal behavioural norms and standards. There have been several studies that deal specifically with territorial behaviours in restaurants, cafes and similar ‘third place’ spaces measuring emotions of observing customers, but not measuring their expectations. It leads to the question of whether observing customers expect employee intervention in the territorial rejection of intruders in a dining environment. This research examined the influence of observed rejection, the perceived similarity of the rejected intruder and perceived crowding on desired employee intervention in a dining environment using the experimental vignette method (EVM), drawing from the other-customer-perception (OCP) framework, social projection and deontic justice theory. Forty diners provided responses to three 7-point-scale questions for a randomly assigned one vignette from a total of eight vignettes using an online survey link. Data obtained were subjected to full factorial MANOVA. The results of this study did not support a direct or interaction effect of independent factors on observing customers’ expectations of employee responses. This suggests that observing customers do not expect employee intervention for the territorial rejections of others. Therefore, other factors possibly prevent forming such expectations in territorial rejection situations.


Introduction
In service marketing environments, customer space sharing requests can be rejected by other customers. Such territorial behaviour may create annoying situations for both the rejected customer and fellow customers who observe that phenomenon (Bryson & Daniels, 2015;Esmark & Noble, 2016). Territorial behaviour is an "attempt to affect, influence, or control actions and interactions (of people, things and relationships) by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a geographical area" (Sack, 1983, p. 55). Simply, it involves psychological and/or physical (with observable characteristics) marking and defending of occupied space. Individuals will often use physical objects to mark their territories, but may also employ verbal or non-verbal behaviours. Encroachments into marked territories are met with rejection behaviours from occupants (Bochner, 2013;Efran & Cheyne, 1974).
In the casual dining environment with minimally explicit norms, there is an inclination of customers to show territorial behaviours and rejection of intruding customers in a different manner (Laurier, Whyte, & Buckner, 2001). The absence, or lack of awareness, of norms may lead customers to engage in behaviours that are more oriented towards their benefit (Sharma, 2008) and thus to demonstrate territorial behaviours. However, boundary marking behaviour is not desired in the public setting because dining environments are characterised by shared ownership of the open dining domain (Altman & Chemers, 1984;Manzo, 2005).

Territorial behaviours
of other customers disturb the service experience of fellow customers (Huang & Wang, 2014). Previous researchers have observed negative emotions and uncomfortable feelings experienced by fellow customers as a result of territorial behaviour of other consumers in restaurants and retail settings (Esmark & Noble, 2016;Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Wu, Mattila, & Han, 2014). These types of actions and behaviours of other customers (i.e. those that diminish one's service experience) are said to be service failures (Huang, 2008). In a dining environment, the demonstration of boundary behaviours prompts observing customers to identify these behaviours as service failures. Customers attribute service failures to the organisation when failure is perceived as under the volitional control of the organisation (Huang, 2008). Customers who are dissatisfied with service failures may not complain, but they expect recovery efforts (Lin, 2010) from the front staff. Mattila, Hanks, & Wang (2014) have shown that good recovery efforts directed at service failures increase the satisfaction of customers. Hence, observed territorial rejection behaviours in a service marketing environment may direct observing customers to construct intervention expectations.
There have been several studies that specifically deal with territorial behaviours in restaurants, cafes and similar "third place" spaces (Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Kirk, 2017;Wu et al., 2014), but these have not been focused on measuring observing customers' expectations in the dining environment, in general or within the New Zealand context, in particular. This study will identify two factors that may influence how observing customers feel these rejection behaviours should be dealt with by employees in a casual dining environment. Specifically, it will investigate the effect of perceived crowding and perceived similarity of the rejected intruder on the desire for employee intervention in a given behavioural rejected and intervening situation. In doing so, this study extends the research of Griffiths and Gilly (2012) and Wu et al. (2014) to examine how customers' territorial verbal defence behaviours influence observing customers' expectation of employee intervention in the casual dining service setting. It will do so using a novel technique in this field of study: the experimental vignette method (EVM).
The EVM helps researchers to explore the human judgments on their behaviours (Wallander, 2009), but is not frequently applied in management (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014) or social science research (Wallander, 2009). Existing studies that have applied EVM were based on the responses received from students in an academic setting, rather than data collected in a more externally valid, "real-world" environment. This study addresses this gap in the literature by gathering responses from actual diners while in the dining context.

Theoretical background Territorial behaviours and rejections
Human territoriality is a long-studied topic. It is a behavioural expression of the feeling of attachment towards physical items or individuals/groups by constructing, communicating, maintaining and restoring the territories around an object (Brown, Lawrence, & Robinson, 2005). Territorial behaviour is a complex process, in part because it is time-and context-dependent (Altman, 1975, p. 104). Altman (1975, p. 107) defined such behaviour as a "self/other boundary-regulation mechanism that involves personalisation of or making of a place or object and communication that it is "owned" by a person or group." Intrusion into these territories results in reactions from the perceived occupier(s) of that space.
In his analysis of the territoriality of individuals, Altman (1975) proposed three types of human territories: primary territories, secondary territories and public territories. Primary territories are owned by individuals and are central to their life; they have control of them on a relatively permanent basis (e.g. home environment). Secondary territories are less central and can be found in individuals' everyday life environment, but have exclusive rights for some individuals (e.g. work environment). Public territories are temporal in nature and all individuals can freely access them (e.g. dining environment). Classification of space is underpinned by two factors: namely, the extent to which the space is close to an individuals' life (i.e. centrality) and the amount of time an individual has spent in the space (i.e. duration). Sense of belongingness of individuals is preserved by constructing an ideal level of social interaction in the primary or secondary territories (Altman, 1975;Wu et al., 2014).
Human territoriality is primarily governed by privacy and belonging needs (Altman, 1975). Other factors include socio-cultural factors, individual factors and the nature of the physical environment (Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Taylor, 1988). The desirability of the territorial behaviour is centred in the setting in which it is performed. For example, it is desired in the work environment, since it encourages group identity and employee organisational commitment (Brown, Lawrence, & Robinson, 2005) through an ideal level of employee interactions.
In some societal environments, individuals use it to maintain their group identity (Taylor, 1988) and preserve privacy within the group.
However, marking of the spatial environment is not desired or encouraged in every spatial setting, particularly in a shared public environment, due to the difficulty of controlling self/other boundaries (Altman, 1975) in a shared space and the ambiguity of ownership of that space (Wu et al., 2014). Nonetheless, individuals often extend their primary territorial behaviours into the public environment, which may create an unfavourable setting for fellow participants (Bryson & Daniels, 2015;Esmark & Noble, 2016;Johns & Kivela, 2001). Others may encroach into, or cross through, marked territories in the public environment, which can result in verbal or non-verbal rejection behaviour of occupants (Altman, 1975). Ashley and Noble (2014) found that perceived intrusion of employees in restaurant and retail environments directs customers to retaliate against the intruder in some manner, to abandon the establishment, or both. In the service marketing environment, territorial rejection behaviours are likely to give rise to negative feelings in the rejected customers and in those observing the interaction (Esmark & Noble, 2016;Johns & Kivela, 2001). These negative feelings can be converted into behaviours that are directed at other entities, including the organisation, its representatives or its customers. Negative feelings arising from territorial behaviours have been shown to encourage customer conflicts (Ashley & Noble, 2014;Griffiths & Gilly, 2012).
Despite these issues, individuals do extend their territorial behaviours in commercial public environments and refuse to share space with others to preserve their privacy. Sometimes, individuals may request to share a table with occupied individuals, thus becoming an intruder. Table sharing requests of others may prompt verbal and non-verbal defence behaviours of occupants in the dining environment (Altman, 1975;Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Wu et al., 2014). In such instances, occupants may show verbal refusal to share the table, which can vary from dishonest rejection to honest rejection. Dishonest rejection is an act of lying or providing false information by the occupant when he or she is asked to share a table in the dining environment (Griffiths & Gilly, 2012). Honest rejection occurs when the occupier gives a true and justifiable reason for his or her unwillingness to share the table (e.g. the occupier is waiting for a companion to join her or him).
Customers' assessment of the appropriateness of others' behaviour depends on both the behavioural norms of the context and the observing customer's standards (Martin, 1996;Wu et al., 2014). In the service setting, the role of customers is not always explicitly stated as it is for employees (Brocato, Voorhees, & Baker, 2012). The absence of behavioural norms drives customers to apply tacitly shared rules of conduct to judge others (Grove & Fisk, 1997). In other words, knowledge about the situation or situational norms drive individuals to demonstrate appropriate behaviours (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003;Joly, Stapel, & Lindenberg, 2008) and to have expectations of others' behaviours.
Further, customers are expected to learn shared rules from each other and practice them in the service setting (Brocato et al., 2012). By learning and adopting them, customers use their behaviour as norms to evaluate others' behaviours (Dunning & Hayes, 1996). When rejection is observed by other customers, norms regarding sharing, telling the truth and similar pro-social behaviours may in part determine their reaction to the rejection and their expectations of who might be responsible for remediating the situation, if necessary. This would be particularly so if they are aware of the justifiability of the occupier's choice, i.e. whether or not it is an honest or dishonest rejection. Thus, it was hypothesised that perceived degree of honesty of the rejection would influence the manner in which an observer would wish to have the situation addressed.

Similarity of the rejected intruders and appropriateness of the rejection
It is an axiom of social psychology that the psychological reactions of participants in a setting can be influenced by the presence or actions of other participants (Latané, 1981). In the service marketing environment, the customer service experience is influenced by the presence and behaviour of other customers (Verhoef et al., 2009). The term 'other customers' is a multidimensional construction having different facets (Kim & Lee, 2012) and may include familiar or unfamiliar persons from the standpoint of a customer (Miao, 2014). Familiar strangers are those customers seen more often by fellow customers, while completely unknown individuals are self-explanatory. Other customers can make their presence in the service environment without direct interaction or involvement with fellow customers (Brocato et al., 2012). The presence and interactions of different types of customers make a complex social environment within the service setting (Miao, 2014).
Behaviours of other customers can enhance or diminish the service experience of fellow customers (Brocato et al., 2012;Grove & Fisk, 1997;Kim & Lee, 2012;Martin, 1996;Mattila et al., 2014;Miao, Mattila, & Mount, 2011). Brocato et al.(2012) proposed the Other-Customer-Perception Framework (OCP) to account for customers' perception of other customers. This model proposed that customers are influenced by several observable characteristics of those around them: (a) perceived similarity (i.e. to what extent observing customers feel similar and identify themselves with others); (b) physical appearance (i.e. physical characteristics and overall look of others); and (c) suitability of the behavior (i.e. appropriateness of the behaviour of others). Customers use these three characteristics to assess others. This study adopted two dimensions from the OCP framework in building the argument: perceived similarity of others and appropriateness of others' behaviours.
Perceived similarity is the degree to which observed others are seen as similar to observing customers in terms of the others' attributes (Brocato et al., 2012).
Similarities in gender, nationality, age or any other observable physical characteristic can help observing customers to judge the similarity of patrons available in the service environment. Perceived similarity of others influences fellow customers' emotional responses (excitement, positive disconfirmation and satisfaction) (Kwon, Ha, & Im, 2016;Wu et al., 2014) and behavioral responses (i.e. purchase, approach or avoidance and seating distances) (Brocato et al., 2012;Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson, 2011). It has been argued that in a dining environment, customers observe the similarity as well as dissimilarity of other customers (Brack & Benkenstein, 2012). Hence, this study proposed that observing customers tend to judge a rejected intruder as 'similar' or 'dissimilar' to themselves. In a dining environment, it is a commonly understood norm to share tables with others if the place is crowded. However, refusing to share a table with another customer in a crowded service environment violates such accepted norms (Wu et al., 2014). Perceived crowding should, therefore, influence an observing customer's evaluation of others' rejection behaviours. As in the study by Wu et al. (2014), the current research proposes that the perceived appropriateness of others' territorial rejection behaviour in the dining environment is determined by the perceived crowding level.

Employee intervention expectation
In a service environment, service failures reduce the service experience of customers (McCollough, Berry, & Yadav, 2000) due to the errors associated with the service process, employees or other customers.
Inappropriate behaviour of other customers is seen as service failures of others (Huang, 2008). Researchers have documented different types of other customers' failures in the marketing environment (see for Harris & Reynolds, 2003) Customers generally attribute others' service failures to the service organisation if failures are seen as within the volitional control of the firm (Huang, 2008) and may expect employee intervention (Hoffman, Kelley, & Rotalsky, 1995;W.Kelley & Hoffman, 1993) to discourage such behaviours. For instance, fellow customers who experience deception due to the territorial behaviours of others may attribute their dissatisfaction to unsuccessful management (Griffiths & Gilly, 2012) and may expect remediate strategies.
Employee intervention is one recovery strategy that service organisations can adopt to reduce the effects of service failures (Hoffman et al., 1995). It implies the intervention of employees or management to curtail inappropriate behaviours of customers to reduce service dissatisfaction and increase harmony between customers. It can be done by solving the problems occurring in the service environment (W. Kelley & Hoffman, 1993) and apologising for the inappropriate behaviours of others or by taking necessary steps to avoid future occurrences (Huang, 2008;R. Johnston & Ferna, 1999). In particular, stable causes (i.e. territorial behaviours of other customers) in the service environment direct customers to form expectations in which they expect organisational involvement to address these issues (Huang, 2008).
Norm and social control perspective, social projection process and deontic justice theory are applied to justify the observing customers' intervention expectations for the intruder rejection situations in this study. Limited space directs existing customers to perceive the space as narrow in a crowded dining environment and encourages them to demonstrate situational norms, i.e. show acceptable behaviours (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003). Additionally, participants expect similar behaviours from others. A crowded environment converts neutral dining space into a humanised environment while encouraging participants to apply social norms (Joly et al., 2008). Therefore, in a crowded situation, diners are more likely to expect others to respect the situational norms and share a table.
Counter-normative behaviour of others prompts fellow participants to search for social control if it has personal implications in a crowded dining environment (Brauer & Chekroun, 2005). Territorial rejection of intruders in a café setting elicits negative emotions in observing customers' minds (Wu et al., 2014), showing the personal implications. Hence, personal implication emerging from territorial rejections of intruders in a crowded dining setting may prompt observing customers to develop employee intervention expectations.
Social projection theory holds the view that individuals automatically project their feelings and thoughts onto others and expect others to be similar (Krueger, 2007). This process drives individuals to make inferences on similar others (Clement & Krueger, 2002). In the dining environment, customers assess the similarity of others by observing their fellow participants. Previous researchers have highlighted that inferences made by customers on similar others in service failure situations result in negative evaluations on service (Voss & Jiménez, 2010). Additionally, Wu et al. (2014) indicated the social projection process of observing customers in the café setting.
Additionally, the authors also highlighted that crowded service setting limits the observing customers' social projection process. Thus, drawing from the social projection process, observing customers in a dining environment may project their feelings onto rejected intruders who are perceived as similar and may expect employee intervention. In contrast, deontic justice theory holds the view that individuals have a predisposition to react to perceived wrongdoing or unfair treatment of others (Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger, 2003). Territorial rejections of others that put a person into difficult conditions direct individuals (including observers) to react irrespective of their own economic and psychological interests (Skarlicki, Van Jaarsveld, & Walker, 2008). Customers experience emotional reactions within themselves when they are aware that others are being treated badly Voss & Jiménez, 2010). Further, individuals predict others' feelings based on the prediction of their own aroused feelings (Van Boven & Loewenstein, 2003). When individuals are aroused by a perceived wrongdoing of others, rejection of the intruder in a crowded dining environment may cause observing customers to expect employee intervention, irrespective of any perceived similarity of the intruder or crowding level. Reinforced by the above assumptions, the following hypothesis was postulated.

H1
The perceived crowding of a dining environment, the similarity of intruder and honesty of a territorial rejection will predict the degree to which a customer desires employee intervention in the situation.

Methods Participants
A total of 51 diners were selected randomly to obtain the responses for this study. Six of them declined to participate, resulting in an 88% response rate. In total, five cases were removed from the data set due to incomplete responses. Of the remaining, 40% of the participants were male and 60% were female. Participants were aged between 16 and 79 years, with a mean age of 40.73 years (sd = 16.93 years). Frequency of visiting dining establishments was recorded: weekly (27.5%), several times a week (22.5%), fortnightly (20%), monthly (10%) and not often (20%).

Instrument
To test the hypothesis, this study adopted a 2 (territorial rejection: honest vs dishonest) × 2 (crowding: uncrowded vs crowded) × 2 (perceived similarity of the rejected intruder: dissimilar vs similar) between-subject experimental vignette design. Research studies show that studying human judgment is best supported by vignette experiments (Wallander, 2009); thus, aligning with guidelines specified by different experts(see Aguinis & Bradley, 2014;Evans et al., 2015;Hughes & Huby, 2012;Wallander, 2009), this study developed eight written vignettes. The three factors (crowding: crowding vs uncrowded, perceived similarity of the rejected intruder: similar vs dissimilar, territorial rejection: honest and dishonest) were manipulated with a scenario describing a person (named "Brooke") visiting a casual dining restaurant (see Appendix for the vignettes). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the eight vignettes using Qualtrics online survey software. After reading the written vignette, participants were asked to complete the intervention expectations.
Employee involvement expectation included three items, each of which was written to reflect the intervention strategy of apology, employee intervention (W. Kelley & Hoffman, 1993) and assurance to avoid future occurrence (Huang, 2008;R. Johnston & Ferna, 1999). Responses to these items were measured on 7-point Likerttype scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Participants were asked to indicate to what extent that they agreed or disagreed with the intervention statements given in the vignette "I expect the employee of the restaurant to resolve the situation" "I expect the employee of the restaurant to apologise for the situation," and "I expect the employee of the restaurant to provide an assurance the situation will not occur again." During the data collection stage, it was decided to check the perceived realism of the vignette. This was tested by including an item adapted from Wu et al. (2014). The responses were recorded in a 7-point bipolar scale (1 = very difficult to 7 = very easy). Perceived realism was moderately high (M = 5.04) across the vignettes within the data received after including the perceived realism item.

Procedure
The participants in this study were recruited from the Cottage Café restaurant in Lincoln, New Zealand on a voluntary basis. Prior approval was obtained from the café management before approaching the diners. The diners who completed their eating were approached and briefed about the study. A computer tablet carrying the survey link was handed out to those diners who indicated an interest to participate. The tablet with a survey link showed the participant an information sheet on the project and an informed consent form on the next page. Additionally, a study information sheet was provided to the diners. After reading the information sheet, participants were given a chance to ask questions. Those who agreed to participate clicked the "Agreed" button in the consent form and provided their responses.

Results
The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effects of observed territorial rejection, perceived crowding and perceived similarity of an intruder on expectations of restaurant employee response, namely apologies, interventions and assurances. A fullfactorial, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted using the dichotomous independent variables of crowding, similarity (of the intruder to the respondent) and honesty of response to the intrusion and expectations of apology, intervention and assurance as the dependent variables. Tests of the univariate assumptions for this procedure showed that intervention expectation did not deviate significantly from a normal distribution (K-S test; D =.11, p > 0.05), that there were no univariate outliers (tested by examining boxplots) and that homogeneity of variance within cells (Levene's test) did not deviate significantly from equality (p > 0.05). Additional tests, specifically multivariate assumptions, included Mahalanobis Distance for outliers (none; all M-D p > .001), dependent variable multicollinearity (all passed; correlations ranged from 0.30 to 0.54) and Box's M test for homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices (passed; p > 0.25). After these assumptions were checked, the MANOVA was conducted. The results of this procedure showed no significant main or interaction effects of honesty, similarity or crowding on expectations of an apology, intervention or assurances. Table 1 contains a summary of the statistics associated with the MANOVA.

Discussion
This study attempted to measure the expectations of restaurant customers regarding employee interventions in personal space intrusion. The findings of this study failed to support the hypotheses regarding the influence of three situational features: perceived crowding; the honesty of a reason given for rejecting intrusions; and similarity of the respondent to the intruder. Participants of this study did not expect employee intervention to handle the territorial rejections of other customers or to provide justice for the intruders. However, previous studies showed the discomfort experienced by observing customers (i.e. cognitive and affective) due to territorial behaviour of other customers (Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Wu et al., 2014). The current findings differ from Huang (2008) where he found that there is an employee intervention expectation for the negative feelings experienced by customers due to others' service failures. Perhaps, driven by individuality, lack of personal implications associated with others' behaviours could have prevented participants from forming intervention expectations. This could have prevented the projection of participants' feelings onto others or their justice expectations for others. Therefore, the study results do not support the social control, deontic justice or social projection process of the participants, suggesting other factors possibly prevent them from forming such expectations in territorial rejection situations.
One possible reason for participants acting in this manner is their cultural value orientation. The cultural background of the participants of this study was Western European, a group who value individuality and independence and show respect for privacy. Therefore, they may accommodate the outcomes of rejected others. Thus privacy, extended into public restaurants, along with rejections could be a commonly-understood value (i.e. cultural value orientation) by this society and therefore they may not expect employee intervention.
Additionally, a strong focus on social harmony in the participants' mind could have prevented the formation of expectations while valuing others' personal space. Generally, New Zealand culture is described as 'trying to live in harmony with each other' (J. Johnston, 2001, p. 200). Thus, cultural elements could have prevented the formation of judgements on intervention expectations. Participants' responses were consistent with Fischer's (2016) idea in which he emphasised that individual perception of injustice and their actions (i.e. actions or no actions) are reliant on individuals' personal and cultural value orientation. Griffiths and Gilly (2010) stated that cultural differences across individuals determine the acceptance of others' territorial behaviours and intention to share the space with others.
The participants' fairness perception of rejected intruders could have influenced their answers. The majority of the participants in this study were females and this could have had an influence on the formation of intervention expectations. Studies have highlighted the influence of gender on accepting the territorial behaviours of others (Griffiths & Gilly, 2010).
The participants' behaviours also could have prevented forming employee intervention expectations in their mind. Participants who violate social norms do not expect intervention for similar others who make the same mistake. Previous studies have highlighted that individuals who have higher territorial tendencies are not motivated to project their feelings onto other territorial customers. This could have influenced the observing customers from forming intervention expectations.
Several other limitations were observed and need to be acknowledged. Generally, EVM requires a respondent's skill to give their responses to the written vignettes. Participants of this study were comprised of a considerable number of older individuals and they may not have been able to mimic the live experience. Therefore, inability to project their experience onto the scenarios may have prevented giving true judgment.
Observation of the data matrix reported non-homogeneous participants in terms of their age, suggesting a possible influence of sample characteristics. Even though treatments (i.e. vignettes) were randomly assigned to subjects, the small sample size may have caused a selection bias. Additionally, the limited statistical power associated with small sample size in this study may have prevented significant results. Post hoc power analysis revealed that a sample of 341 would be required to see significant statistical results (η2=.02, 1-β=.80) at p < 0.05. However, the recommended minimum effect size for a squared mean difference studies was reported as η2 = 0.04 (Ferguson, 2009).
In summary, this paper provides a valuable contribution to the marketing literature by addressing the recent call made by Kirk (2017) to investigate territoriality in the marketing environment. Further, it showed a new way of implementing the experimental vignette method with the help of new technology without participants being restricted to pen and pencil methods.
Though the study had its own limitations, it can be concluded that it reflects the territorial intervention expectations of observing customers in the dining environment. However, one needs to be cautious before drawing any conclusions without further research on this, including drawing a representative sample, applying it in another cultural setting and applying different research methods. Further, future research should address the limitations of this study and determine the influence of other variables on territorial tendencies and their acceptance in different contexts.

Annexure Vignette, Dimensions and Levels
Brooke visited a casual dining restaurant in Christchurch on a holiday and sat at the corner of the restaurant to see the entire dining floor. In a few minutes, Brooke observed that the restaurant was filled with diners and saw one individual similar to Brooke's age and gender approaching another customer who was using a personal laptop/mobile while keeping personal belongings on the top of the adjacent chair. When the approaching person asked to sit close to the occupant, the individual was told that the place was already occupied, though it was not.
Further, Brooke saw that one of the employees of the restaurant observed the situation and politely asked the occupant to take her personal belongings off the chair, allowing the approaching customer to have a seat to enjoy the meal.

Employee Involvement Expectations
To what extent would you expect the employee of the restaurant to regulate the behaviour of the occupant in the above situation? Let number 1 denote Strongly Disagree and number 7 denote Strongly Agree. Please choose the expectation between 1 and 7 that best fits your judgment about the above situation. You may choose any number to represent your judgment.
I expect the employee of the restaurant to resolve the situation Strongly Agree 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Disagree I expect the employee of the restaurant to apologise for the situation Strongly Agree 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Disagree I expect the employee of the restaurant to provide assurance that the situation will not occur again Strongly Agree 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Disagree