Abstract: Based on social exchange theory and regulatory focus theory and using psychological safety and regulatory focus as mediating and moderating variables, this paper constructs a model to explain the mechanism of how customer empowering behaviors influence employees’ proactive customer service performance. A multi-source and multi-wave questionnaire survey of 236 employee-supervisor dyads from service industry finds that (1) customer empowering behaviors have a significant positive effect on employee proactive customer service performance, and employees’ psychological safety plays a mediating role in the association between customer empowering behaviors and proactive customer service performance; (2) promotion focus strengthens the positive effect of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ psychological safety, while prevention focus inhibits such effect; (3) the higher the level of employee promotion focus, the stronger the positive effect of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ proactive customer service performance through psychological safety; in contrast, the higher the level of employees’ prevention focus, the weaker such indirect effect.

Key words: customer empowering behaviors, psychological safety, regulatory focus, proactive customer service performance, social exchange theory