Determinants of Attitude and the Intention to Stay of Employees in Low-Cost Carriers: Using Justice Theory

: The purpose of this research is to examine the inﬂuential attributes of employees’ attitudes and intentions to stay in the domain of human resources management in a low-cost carrier business. Using justice theory as a theoretical underpinning, ﬁnancial compensation, nonﬁnancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness were derived. The explained attributes of this research were attitude and intention to stay. This study used a survey and collected data on 233 employees in low-cost carriers as survey participants. To test the hypotheses, this study employed structural equation modeling. The results showed that attitude was positively impacted by ﬁnancial compensation, nonﬁnancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness. The results also revealed the positive effect of coworker relationships and attitudes on the intention to stay. This study sheds light on the literature by ensuring the explanatory power of justice theory in the area of low-cost carrier business.


Introduction
The low-cost carrier business market has grown continuously.According to Globe Newswire [1], the market size of low-cost carriers was 172.54 billion US dollars in 2022, and the report anticipated its size to grow to 302.85 billion US dollars in 2027.Plus, global economic recovery after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic also might project the sales recovery of low-cost carrier businesses due to the increased demand for travel.It implies that low-cost carrier business is attractive because market growth and recovering demand to travel are likely to become the opportunity from the viewpoint of business.Additionally, previous studies documented that the low-cost carrier business is a labor-intensive area [2][3][4][5].Under this condition, it is imperative for low-cost carrier businesses to acquire and retain talented employees to become more competitive in the market.In addition, although numerous studies have inspected the characteristics of airline employees, low-cost carrier-focused studies have been rarely executed [2,6,7].This fact leads this work to explore the characteristics of employees in the domain of lowcost carriers.Hence, this study investigates the characteristics of employees of low-cost carrier businesses.
This research adopts attitude [7][8][9][10] and intention to stay [11][12][13] as the central elements because studies in human resource management have adopted both variables to determine labor characteristics.As a theoretical underpinning to derive explanatory attributes for attitude and intention to stay, this research chooses justice theory.Justice theory has been selected by many scholars to examine employees' characteristics using three elements: distributive, interactional, and procedural [14][15][16][17][18].However, few studies have been executed in the domain of the low-cost carrier business to test the accountability of justice theory for employee behaviors.Namely, insufficient studies have been conducted for low-cost carrier employees, although low-cost carrier businesses' human resource management might be varied with full-service carriers and other service business sectors in terms of compensation, interaction, and procedure.To fill this research gap, this research attests to the accountability of justice theory in the case of low-cost carriers.Furthermore, this study derives four attributes from justice theory: financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness.Both financial and nonfinancial compensation represent distributive justice, coworker relationships are part of interactional justice, and procedural fairness is a sub-dimension of procedural justice.
In sum, the purpose of this work is to attest to the relationship between financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, procedural fairness, attitude, and intention to stay in the domain of the low-cost carrier business.The current study sheds light on the literature by ensuring the explanatory power of justice theory in the context of low-cost carrier business employee management.Such an effort might contribute to the literature by understanding the characteristics of employees in the domain of low-cost carrier business using justice theory as a theoretical foundation.Plus, this research is worthwhile because this study attempts to document more concrete attributes of justice theory's sub-dimensions.Moreover, this research can provide managers of low-cost carriers with information for more adequate employee management.

Intention to Stay
Intention to stay is defined as employees' intention to continue to work in their current organization [11][12][13]19].Because prior studies argue that employee turnover causes recruiting, training, and screening costs [20][21][22], understanding the reasons for employees' intention to stay is worthwhile to lower the cost of business.Numerous studies have explored influential variables of the intention to stay.For instance, Zaghloul et al. [23] and Karlsson et al. [24] used intention to stay as an explained attribute by employing nurses as study subjects.Aboobaker et al. [25] researched the antecedents of teachers' intention to stay.Chiang et al. [26] and Sobaih et al. [27] inspected the antecedents of hotel employees' intention to stay.Therefore, the intention to stay has been explored by scholars as a popular behavior.

Attitude
Attitude refers to a predisposition toward certain objects [28][29][30][31].Prior studies have shown that attitude is either positive or negative [7][8][9]32].The extant literature has employed attitude in the employee management domain and defined attitude as an assessment of the organization to which an employee belongs [33][34][35].Attitude has been employed as the main piece of numerous empirical studies.For example, Bajrami et al. [35] used attitude to determine the characteristics of hospitality employees.Kröll and Nüesch [36] examined employee attitude as an explained attribute by investigating German laborers.Similarly, Lyu and Zhu [37] adopted attitude as the main variable to investigate the characteristics of Chinese employees.The literature review suggests that attitude has been actively examined by scholars in the human resource management domain.

Justice Theory
Justice is defined as the right and sound condition to maintain society [14,16,38].Justice theory suggests that justice consists of three dimensions: distributive, interactional, and procedural [39,40].For distributive justice, scholars contend that individuals assess justice based on their own share, which could be linked with compensation [15][16][17][18].Interactional justice refers to how an individual perceives fairness in building relationships with his or her colleagues [17,41,42].Finally, procedural justice involves whether the process of certain work is transparent and rational from the perspective of the members of certain organizations [42][43][44].Additionally, many studies have demonstrated the explanatory power of justice theory using three dimensions.Moon [16] and Khalid et al. [17] adopted the justice theory to research employee behaviors.Liljegren and Ekberg [41] employed justice theory to inspect the determinants of burnout and the self-rated health of employees.Usmani and Jamal [43] used justice theory to investigate the behavioral pattern of employees in the banking service sector.Zainalipour et al. [42] also adopted justice theory's three dimensions for an investigation of teacher behavior in the workplace.Bakotić and Bulog [45] demonstrated the explanatory power of justice theory in the Croatian service business sector.In a similar vein, Ghaderi et al. [44] attested to the accountability of justice theory in the domain of hospitality business employee management.Previous research has alleged that distributive justice is a reward for labor in the human resource management domain [46][47][48].Additionally, scholars contend that adequate rewards encourage employees to improve their working quality [49,50].The extant literature has also argued that employee compensation consists of both financial and nonfinancial rewards [50][51][52].Financial compensation is monetary compensation, while nonfinancial compensation is other welfare, such as work-life balance or investment in employees' education and career development [47,48].The coworker relationship is an area of interaction justice [53,54].Scholars have noted that airline service is labor intensive, and such conditions lead employees to value their relationships with their coworkers more because they need to cooperate with their colleagues to accomplish an adequate level of performance [3,[55][56][57].The domain of procedural justice is the transparent process of human resource management, which can involve information disclosure to employees [58,59], which enables employees to perceive their organization more fairly [60,61].

Hypothesis Development and Research Model
Previous studies have claimed that employee compensation builds a positive attitude [62-64].Konovsky et al. [65] contended that procedural and distributive justice are positively associated with employee attitude.Choi [66] and Marzucco et al. [67] also demonstrated a significant impact of organizational justice on employee attitudes.Gopinath and Becker [68] revealed the positive effect of procedural justice on employee attitudes.Hopkins and Weathington [69] showed that organizational justice exerted a positive effect on attitude.Additionally, prior studies have reported the positive effect of organizational justice on the intention to stay.For instance, Griffin [70] and Shahid et al. [71] revealed a positive impact of organizational justice on the intention to stay.Gupta and Singh [63] also found a positive effect of organizational justice on the intention to stay by researching employees in the information technology business domain.In a similar vein, Mehmood et al. [72] employed police officers as survey participants and found that organizational justice is a critical attribute that accounts for the intention to stay.To be specific, Hassan [73] exposed the positive impact of both financial and non-financial compensation on employee retention intention.Park et al. [74] also reported that competitive compensation is an essential element to build the intention to stay of Korean employees.Next, Paul and Kee [75] revealed that problems with colleagues in organizations led employees to quit their organizations.Miao et al. [76] similarly found that the interactional justice climate of an organization played a significant role in employee attitude.In addition, Narayanan et al. (2019) claimed that procedural justice is a critical attribute that positively affects employees' intention to stay.Taha and Esenyel [77] disclosed that procedural justice is a critical determinant of employee turnover.Plus, Gharbi et al. [78] showed that employee turnover intention is negatively influenced by procedural justice.Based on the review of the literature, it is identified that organizational justice is influential on the psychological status of employees.Thus, this research proposes the following research hypotheses: H1a.Financial compensation exerts a positive effect on attitude.
H1b. Financial compensation exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.

H2a. Nonfinancial compensation exerts a positive effect on attitude.
H2b. Nonfinancial compensation exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.
H3a.The coworker relationship exerts a positive effect on attitude.
H3b.The coworker relationship exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.
H4a. Procedural fairness exerts a positive effect on attitude.
H4b. Procedural fairness exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.
Previous research has argued that attitude exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay [79,80].Fletcher et al. [81] showed that the intention to stay is positively influenced by employee attitude.Dechawatanapaisal [82] also revealed that employees' intention to stay is positively affected by their attitude toward the organization.In a similar vein, Fletcher et al. [81] exposed the positive impact of employee attitude on intention to stay by exploring employees in seven organizations.With regard to the literature review, this research proposes the following research hypothesis: H5.Attitude exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.H2a: Nonfinancial compensation exerts a positive effect on attitude.
H2b: Nonfinancial compensation exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.

H3a:
The coworker relationship exerts a positive effect on attitude.

H3b: The coworker relationship exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.
H4a: Procedural fairness exerts a positive effect on attitude.

H4b: Procedural fairness exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.
Previous research has argued that attitude exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay [79,80].Fletcher et al. [81] showed that the intention to stay is positively influenced by employee attitude.Dechawatanapaisal [82] also revealed that employees' intention to stay is positively affected by their attitude toward the organization.In a similar vein, Fletcher et al. [81] exposed the positive impact of employee attitude on intention to stay by exploring employees in seven organizations.With regard to the literature review, this research proposes the following research hypothesis: H5: Attitude exerts a positive effect on the intention to stay.

Data Collection
This study collected data using an online survey.The survey participants were employees of Korean low-cost carriers.A survey link was sent to survey participants using a Google survey system because it is not only more convenient to manage the responses as compared to paper-based surveys but is also less constrained by time and place for data

Data Collection
This study collected data using an online survey.The survey participants were employees of Korean low-cost carriers.A survey link was sent to survey participants using a Google survey system because it is not only more convenient to manage the responses as compared to paper-based surveys but is also less constrained by time and place for data collection.Ali et al. [83] documented that employees are the most responsive group, which suggests that the quality of data is more likely to be assured as compared to other groups such as consumers and administrators.Data collection was implemented between March 10 and 12 April 2023.The number of valid observations for data analysis was 233.Table 1 shows the results of the frequency analysis for the survey participants.Male and female participants numbered 48 and 185, respectively.For marital status, 160 were single and 73 were married.

Measurement Items
This research used a survey to collect the data.Most measurement items employed a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).However, attitude measurement adopted a semantic differential 5-point scale (e.g., (1 = negative, 5 = positive)).Table 1 illustrates the measurement items.This study referenced prior studies for measurement items, and the items were adjusted to be suitable for the current research aim.All constructs were composed of four items.With regard to the definition of the variable, financial compensation is employees' appraisal of their salary level.Nonfinancial compensation is employees' perception of the benefit of working for low-cost carriers.The coworker relationship is defined as how employees of low-cost carriers assess their relationships with their colleagues.Procedural fairness is the degree of information disclosure for human resource procedures.Attitude is how favorably employees view their organization.Finally, the intention to stay in current work is the extent to which employees desire to continue working in their current job.

Data Analysis
This research conducted frequency analysis to examine the profile information of the survey participants.Confirmatory factor analysis was implemented to ensure convergent validity using the following criteria: factor loading: 0.5, construct reliability using cutoff value: 0.7, and average variance extracted: 0.5 [84][85][86].A correlation matrix was employed to inspect the relationship between the variables and to attest to the discriminant validity by applying the instruction that the square root of the average variance extracted should be greater than the correlation coefficient [84][85][86].A structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses.To appraise the goodness of fit for both the confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model, this research used multiple indices, RMR (root mean-square residual) < 0.05, NFI (normed fit index) > 0.8, IFI (incremental fit index) > 0.8, TLI (Tucker-Lewis index) > 0.8, and CFI (comparative fit index) > 0.8 by following the guidelines of the extant literature [83][84][85].

Discussion
This research investigated the determinants of attitude and the intention to stay by studying employees in the low-cost carrier domain.The theoretical foundation of this research was justice theory, and financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness were derived as the main explanatory variables.Regarding the descriptive statistics of the variables, low-cost carrier employees appeared to have slightly negative results for their financial (Mean = 2.57, SD = 0.89) and nonfinancial compensation (Mean = 2.70, SD = 0.87).This implies that the financial reward and welfare of employees in the low-cost carrier business are not from the perspective of employees.The coworker relationship was perceived as somewhat positive (mean = 3.88, SD = 0.82), whereas employees in low-cost carriers regarded procedural transparency as slightly negative (mean = 2.67, SD = 0.82).Considering the results of the hypothesis testing, attitude was positively affected by all elements: financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness.Nonfinancial compensation exerted the strongest effect compared to the other three attributes.It can be inferred that employees develop a positive attitude through perceived justice in their organization, and nonfinancial compensation is the most essential aspect of a positive attitude toward the organization.However, the results revealed that only coworker relationships had a significant impact on intention to stay.This might be due to the more positive appraisal of survey participants compared to the other three pieces: financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, and procedural fairness.Namely, the mean values of the other three attributes tilted to the negative side, while only employees of low-cost carriers appraised the coworker relationship as quite positive.Finally, the results revealed that attitude played a significant role in building the intention to stay in the domain of the low-cost carrier business.

Conclusions
This research makes a theoretical contribution.Even though many studies have examined employee characteristics in the domain of airline business, sparse research has been implemented focusing on employees of low-cost carriers [6,7,87,88].In order to streamline such a research gap, this research demonstrated the accountability of justice theory in the case of low-cost carrier employees.This study also derived four attributes from justice theory, and these four attributes exerted a significant impact on both attitude and intention to stay.Plus, the significance of justice-related attributes is likely to become the unique point of this research, which might reflect the characteristics of human resource management in the case of low-cost carriers.Moreover, this study sheds light on the literature by scrutinizing the sub-elements of justice theory in the context of low-cost carriers.The results are somewhat unique and may help scholars and businesses to further understand employees' perceptions of low-cost carriers.Finally, this research showed external validity by demonstrating the significant association between attitude and intention to stay [81,82].
This study also has practical implications.Above all, managers in low-cost carrier businesses should consider compensation adjustments to obtain more capable human resources.Although both financial and nonfinancial compensation is crucial for building a positive attitude toward the organization, employees perceive their reward somewhat negatively.Hence, low-cost carrier managers might contemplate how to enhance the compensation system for their employees, which in turn could become an avenue to secure their current and future human resources.Moreover, human resource managers of low-cost carriers might consider how they can make the organizational culture conducive to cooperation between employees, which establishes a better coworker relationship.Such an effort is likely to build employees' positive attitudes and intention to stay.Therefore, social activity programs in organizations might be able to be considered to make closer relationships between employees.Additionally, low-cost carrier business administrators can consider exposing their human resource procedures to their labor force.This effort could improve employees' attitudes toward the organization.Low-cost carrier managers could also consider more socially responsible business implementation, such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) operations, which may play an essential role in developing better attitudes and improving employees' intention to stay.In addition, low-cost carrier business managers might be able to implement ESG activities concentrating on employee welfare.By doing so, low-cost carriers can obtain financial benefits from employee management and more capable labor, which ultimately results in the accomplishment of business sustainability.This work is not free from limitations.First, the sample of this research was limited to the case of Korean low-cost carrier businesses.Because the working conditions and culture may vary in other geographical cases, it is worthwhile for future research to examine the effect of attributes of justice theory using samples from other countries.Moreover, the number of observations in this study was limited because it was constrained to the case of only low-cost carriers.Future research can use more observations for statistical inference to obtain stronger statistical inference.
Author Contributions: Formal analysis, R.J.; Writing-original draft, J.M.; Writing-review and editing, W.S.L.All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Figure 1
Figure 1 shows the research model which reflects the proposed research hypotheses.Attitude and intention to stay are positively affected by financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness.Moreover, attitude is positively associated with the intention to stay.

Figure 1
Figure 1 shows the research model which reflects the proposed research hypotheses.Attitude and intention to stay are positively affected by financial compensation, nonfinancial compensation, coworker relationships, and procedural fairness.Moreover, attitude is positively associated with the intention to stay.
Note: KRW is Korean won, M stands for million.

Table 2 .
Description of measurement.

Table 4 .
Correlation matrix.: * p < 0.05, Diagonal is square root of average variance extracted, SD stands for standard deviation. Note

Table 5 .
Results of structural equation model.

Table 5 .
Results of structural equation model.