Sex differences in mesolimbic effective connectivity: Money versus funny compensation during service recovery

Sex-based differences in service recovery -the actions taken by firms to address service failures -remain largely unexplored, particularly regarding their underlying neural mechanisms. This research investigates how men and women differ in mesolimbic network connectivity-specifically between the nucleus accumbens (NAc), amygdala, and midbrain-when exposed to various compensation strategies. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and dynamic causal modeling with parametric empirical Bayes (DCM-PEB) analysis to measure effective connectivity across four service recovery scenarios: monetary compensation with humor (MH), monetary compensation with apology (MA), humor-only (H), and apology-only (CON). The results revealed sex-specific effective connectivity, with monetary compensation engaging the NAc and non-monetary compensation involving the amygdala differently in men and women. Women exhibited stronger midbrain-to-NAc connectivity in the MH condition, suggesting that humor enhances their perception of monetary reward. In contrast, men showed stronger midbrain-to-NAc connectivity in the MA condition, indicating that apologies more effectively engage their reward-related circuits. Additionally, men displayed stronger amygdala-to-midbrain connectivity in the humor-related conditions (H, MH), while women exhibited stronger connectivity in the humor-only condition (H), reflecting sex-specific emotional processing strategies. Notably, men exhibited enhanced NAc-to-amygdala connectivity in both apology-based (MA, CON) and non-monetary conditions (H, CON), reflecting consistent integration of reward and emotional processing. These findings provide neural evidence of sex-based differences in service recovery. Future research could examine cultural and individual differences in humor perception, apology effectiveness, and compensation sensitivity to further refine personalized service recovery approaches based on sex-specific neural mechanisms.