Although previous literature has examined the relationship between workplace fun and work engagement, the construct of psychological capital is introduced in the context of tourism and hospitality to investigate the mediating and moderating roles in this relationship. This research aimed to discuss the effect of workplace fun on psychological capital and further examine psychological capital’s mediating and moderating effects between workplace fun and work engagement. The survey data were taken from 331 front-line employees in customer service-oriented tourism and hospitality enterprises in Taiwan. The results showed that workplace fun has a significant positive effect on psychological capital. In addition, psychological capital plays a partial mediating role between workplace fun and work engagement. Moreover, psychological capital has a significant moderating effect between workplace fun and work engagement, namely, psychological capital can help to strengthen the relationship between workplace fun and work engagement. The implications and suggestions are discussed for tourism and hospitality operators.

Introduction

Nowadays, competition in the tourism and hospitality industry is fierce. In order to gain a competitive advantage, the issue of how to attract and retain high-quality employees has become a major issue faced by various tourism and hospitality organizations. An interesting working environment will have a positive atmosphere that can attract and retain employees for organizations (Chan, 2010). The issue of workplace fun has attracted the attention of industry and academic fields in recent years. Lamm and Meek (2009) argued that workplace fun as interesting, sociable, interpersonal, and recreational tasks and these activities that create an interesting working environment. Moreover, a work environment with fun is one of the factors that distinguish superior performers from others (Chan et al., 2000; Joyce, 2003). Workplace fun has a deep effect on organizations and employees (Owler et al., 2010). From the perspective of organizations, workplace fun is conductive to improving several organizational benefits, including elasticity, competitive advantage and increasing work passion (Fleming, 2005; Karl et al., 2005), good customer service (Karl and Peluchette, 2006), innovation (Bolman and Deal, 2000), empowerment (Baughman, 2001; Bolman and Deal, 2000), creativity (Bolman and Deal, 2000; Deal and Kennedy, 1999), and productivity (Costea et al., 2005; Karl et al., 2005). Moreover, from the employee perspective, an interesting working environment is the main reason to enhance employee’s motive and productivity (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). Workplace fun is conductive to improving job satisfaction (Karl and Peluchette, 2006), organizational commitment (McDowell, 2004), energy (Tews et al., 2012), organizational citizenship behavior (McDowell, 2004), job performance (Zani et al., 2017), and employee well-being (Owler et al., 2010; Tews et al., 2017), and it can also relieve employees’ anger (Tews et al., 2012), emotional exhaustion (Karl et al., 2007), work pressure (Karl et al., 2005), and turnover intention (Tews et al., 2014).