Predicting hospitality employees’ safety performance behaviors in the COVID-19 pandemic

•This research is the first study to theorize and evaluate hospitality employees’ safety performance behaviors.•This research finds the boundary role of communication transparency in the link between safety climate and safety motivation.•This research provides empirical evidence regarding the boundary role of safety-related stigma on hospitality employees’ motivation and behaviors.•Mediation mechanism between safety motivation and safety performance behaviors was explained by prevention work focus.•Hypotheses were tested using data from two different counties (South Korea and the United States) to bolster the generalizability and the robustness of the findings. This study develops and tests a research model to explain and predict how and when organizational safety climate influences hospitality employees’ safety performance behaviors by proposing two boundary conditions: communication transparency and safety-related stigma based on expectancy-valence theory. Specifically, we examined if communication transparency intensifies the impact of perceived safety climate on employees’ safety motivation that drives safety performance behaviors through prevention work focus and if safety-related stigma attenuates the links between safety motivation and safety performance behaviors. Based on two national samples of 214 South Korean and 240 U.S. foodservice employees, this research found that safety climate was positively associated with safety motivation, prompting safety behaviors with the key mediating mechanism of prevention focus work. However, there were different patterns observed for the moderating roles of communication transparency and stigma for the foodservice employees between South Korea and the United States. Implications of the findings are discussed for hospitality researchers and practitioners.