How does AI awareness affect employees’ voice behavior in the service industry? A transactional theory of stress perspective

Purpose This study aims to explore the impacts of service industry employees’ AI awareness on their voice behavior while also considering the dual mediating roles of voice efficacy and job insecurity, as well as the moderating role of trait competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprises data from a two-wave longitudinal survey of 203 employees in the service sector. This study examined all the hypotheses using Mplus 8.0. Findings This study confirms that service sector employees’ AI awareness has significant negative effects on both promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors. Voice efficacy can mediate the negative impact of AI awareness on promotive voice. Both voice efficacy and job insecurity can mediate the negative impact of AI awareness on prohibitive voice. Furthermore, employees’ trait competitiveness can weaken the negative impact of employees’ AI awareness on their voice efficacy. Practical implications Managers should first investigate employees’ AI awareness and then adopt targeted managerial strategies to promote their voice behavior. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature related to the consequences of AI awareness by linking AI awareness to employee voice behavior. Furthermore, this study deepens our understanding of how AI awareness affects employee voice behavior by proposing voice efficacy (i.e. the efficacy pathway) and job insecurity (i.e. the safety pathway) as key mediating mechanisms. Moreover, this study advances our understanding of when AI awareness influences employee voice behavior by identifying the moderating role of trait competitiveness.