The past research of emotional labor, most studies tended to emphasize on either personal characteristics or situational effect. This paper researched how environmental variables and personal variables influenced emotional labor and emotional exhaustion by the view of interactionism. The purpose of this study was not only researched the relation among difficult customer, emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, but also be researched the moderating effect of emotional intelligence , perceived supervisor support and motivation system. Questionnaire was used to collect data from the first-line employees in the service industry. First, the result of this study indicated that the employee's emotional labor was greater when they encountered with difficult customers more frequently. Second, higher level of emotional labor was likely to increase higher level of emotional exhaustion. Third, emotional labor played a partial mediating effect on the relationship between difficult customer and emotional exhaustion. Fourth, emotional intelligence had significant moderating effect on the relationship between difficult customer and emotional labor. Fifth, perceived supervisor support had nonsignificant moderating effect on the relationship between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. Sixth, motivation system had nonsignificant moderating effect on the relationship between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. Implications for management practice and suggestions for further research were proposed.
