Introduction

Previous researchers paid more attention to discuss visitors’ behavior in theme park industry (e.g. Cheng et al., 2014). For example, Cheng et al. (2014) indicated that there are seven factors influencing visitor brand-switching behavior. In fact, how to satisfy customers needs employees to contribute their creative performance. Frontline employees are important to ensure customer satisfaction (Bitner et al., 1990). Frontline employees’ creativity can be of great value for service organizations (Coelho et al., 2011). However, there are fewer articles to explore how to increase employees’ creativity capability in theme park industry. Some previous studies have been conducted on the impact of employee creativity and innovation in the field of general management and hospitality, hence the call of some researchers and practitioners for the need to analyze the influence of creativity and innovation on service organizations (Hon and Lui, 2016). Empirical evidence has revealed that an organization wants to support innovation to encourage employee creativity (Černe et al., 2013). Some studies on knowledge sharing among employees have indicated that knowledge is a key advantage that employees possess for influencing their organization to implement changes (Wynder, 2007; Kessel et al., 2012). Because diverse knowledge serves as the foundation for creativity in an organization, it is necessary for employees to take the initiative on sharing this knowledge (Perry-Smith, 2006). In addition, compared with hard characteristics, leadership is a personal behavior that is likely to be affected by interpersonal interactions (Cheung and Wong, 2011; Edú-Valsania et al., 2016). In various leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX) stresses the importance of building relationships between mutual respect and trust on both supervisors and their subordinates (Gerstner and Day, 1997), whereas other leadership focuses more on a top-down, one-way relationship between these two parties (Zhao, 2015). Therefore, this study determines whether the use of LMX in employee knowledge sharing could affect the relationship between supervisors and their subordinates. A psychological contract is a critical factor to determine the effort that employees exert in their work (Landry et al., 2014). Studies also have shown that both full-time and part-time employees are deeply concerned about a transactional psychological contract from their supervisors (Erkutlu and Chafra, 2016). Therefore, this study investigates the role of a transactional psychological contract if it can enhance creativity in employees. The research scope aims to discuss the relations among knowledge sharing, LMX, transactional psychological contract, and employee creativity in theme park employees in Taiwan. This study proposes that employee knowledge-sharing behavior may increase LMX quality, which, in turn, enhances employee creativity. We constructed a research model on the basis of the proposed research hypotheses (Figure 1) and addressed three research questions: RQ1. Does knowledge sharing relate to employee creativity through the mediating effects of LMX? RQ2. Does the transactional psychological contract moderate the relationship between LMX and employee creativity? RQ3. Does the transactional psychological contract moderate the mediating pathway? This study investigates two research issues as the followings: first, this study examines the relationships between transactional psychological contract and LMX. In addition, this study considers that the relationship between LMX and creativity might be weakened by employee’s psychological contract. Second, this study explores a moderated mediation model that transactional psychological contract plays a moderated mediating role among intent to share knowledge, LMX and employee creativity.