Emotional labour and job satisfaction of adventure tour leaders: does gender matter?

This study aims to examine potential gender differences between adventure tour leaders employed in Australia in regards to the emotions they invest into their jobs. More specifically, it examines the impact of two types of emotional labour, surface acting and deep acting, on male and female adventure tour leaders’ job satisfaction. Whilst surface acting refers to faking feelings that are not really felt, or hiding feelings that are inappropriate to display, deep acting is concerned with aligning one's true feelings with the ones required by the job. Data were gathered through a quantitative on-line survey. Whilst the findings showed that deep acting had a statistically significant positive effect on adventure tour leaders’ job satisfaction, there was no statistically significant relationship between surface acting and job satisfaction. In relation to gender, there were no statistically significant differences between males and females in relation to surface acting, deep acting, job satisfaction, or the impact of surface acting and deep acting on job satisfaction. Contrary to research which suggests that women in general are better at managing their emotions and are more emotionally intelligent than men, it seems like male adventure tour leaders may be just as competent in managing their emotions as female adventure tour leaders. This, in turn, has implications for the manner in which adventure recreation providers manage their human resources.