Hospitality and Retail Management Faculty Awarded Best Paper in ICHRIE 2019

Assistant Professor Danny Choi Ph.D., CHE, CHIA, will present his paper titled, Emotional Dissonance Among Frontline Hospitality Employees: An Exploratory Study Examining Habituation Theory Using fMRI, at the 2019 International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management (ICHRIE) conference ICHRIE in July. Dr. Choi's research was selected for Best Paper at the conference.

Dr. Choi set out to discover the possible implications surrounding the study of stress and anxiety of customers interacting with hospitality employees.

When teaching courses in the Hospitality and Retail Management department, Dr. Choi often explains to his students that employee job satisfaction can have a positive impact on efficient and profitable hospitality operations. Dr. Choi's findings substantiate this concept in his analysis using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, to measure brain responsiveness among hospitality employees.

"Although the conventional stress and anxiety measure didn't find significant difference between the hospitality and non-hospitality employees, the front hospitality employees showed significant signs of progressing toward anxiety and depression," Dr. Choi said. "The analysis outcome has overcome the limitations of the conventional methodology and would provide fundamentals to expand the study of stress and anxiety of customer interacting employees."

Dr. Choi's paper emphasizes that employee satisfaction should be considered in internal marketing efforts with special focus on an employee's emotional dissonance.

Dr. Choi says he was humbled and honored by his selection.

"I want to express my gratitude for all the faculty and staff who have been assisting and collaborating with me," Dr. Choi said.