Antecedents of Self-Efficacy and Task Performance in Hotel Services: The Case of Internship Students in China

Focusing on self-efficacy and social learning theories, this study investigates the mechanic of hotel student interns' self-efficacy and task performance. Since student interns are one of the main human resources in hotels in China, their performance is crucial for hotels, while the mechanic of student interns task performance was less investigated, especially the role of self-efficacy. For this study, 300 student interns were selected from 10 four- and five-star hotels in Beijing, China, and 233 valid responses were received. The study findings show that training and tacit knowledge sharing have significant impacts on self-efficacy but no direct impact on task performance. Self-efficacy has a strong impact on task performance. In addition, self-efficacy mediates the impacts of training and tacit knowledge sharing on task performance. Results suggest that students' self-efficacy is important for hospitality education and the hotel industry, while training and tacit knowledge sharing are key to improve self-efficacy.