Being Somebody Else: Emotional Labour and Emotional Dissonance in the Context of the Service Experience at a Heritage Tourism Site

Hospitality and tourism-based service-providers are subject to negative stress outcomes associated with the performance of emotional labour, such as emotional exhaustion. Research on emotional labour and associated outcomes is, however, lacking in heritage tourism sites. Emotional dissonance is one such stressor that is reported to exist when expressed emotions are in an organisationally desired form but are incongruent with those felt. Literature to date, however, has failed to clearly differentiate between the performance of emotional labour and the experience of emotional dissonance. The present study examined the relationship between emotional labour and emotional dissonance using concepts derived from cognitive dissonance theory. A series of semistructured interviews were conducted with employees across a range of service roles at a heritage museum tourism site. Evaluation of the data suggests that emotional labour and emotional dissonance are distinct constructs and that the negative outcomes of emotional labour are linked to conflicting cognitive appraisals.