Other’s busy or leisure life: how status-presentation on social media affects observers’ responses to service failure

We conducted two experiment studies. Experiment 1 examined the effect of consumers' busy or leisure state on the the observers’ malicious envy and benign envy of these consumers,and explored the role of observers' perceived economic mobility as the the boundary condition. Experiment 2 explored the downstream influence of this effect, and found that when leisure consumers encounter service failures, observers’ negative attitudes toward the service provider do not increase, particularly among those with high perceptions of social mobility. This effect was mediated by the observers’ malicious envy of leisure people. On the contrary, when observers with high perceived social mobility experience benign envy toward those who frequently post their busy status on social media, it amplifies their negative evaluations of companies that deliver failed services to them.