Emotional labor and employee well-being in cross-cultural contexts: A Disney frontline staff's autoethnography

Current tourism and hospitality research on the topic of the influence mechanism of emotional labor and employee well-being lacks both detailed depiction and cross-cultural discussion. Therefore, based on the first author's overseas working experience at Orlando Walt Disney World, this study applied autoethnography as the research method with longitudinal autoethnographic data over six months recorded. An in-depth analysis of three autoethnography sections in cross-cultural contexts was constructed. Findings suggest that the influence mechanism of emotional labor and employee well-being in cross-cultural contexts is a closed loop with mutual entanglement and triggers continuous changes of each other through the permeation of cultural interactions of the individual in a cross-cultural work scenario. Practical implications are then followed.