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This study is based on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model to examine how job demands and technology overload affect work stress for workers using video conferencing apps (VCAs) in organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the moderating effect of technology self-efficacy was tested in the model on the relationship between technology overload and work stress.

An online survey was conducted to investigate workers on PTT forums in Taiwan. A sample was obtained of 253 workers, and structural equation modeling was conducted using AMOS to test the hypotheses.

Job demands positively affect work stress through information overload, communication overload and system feature overload. Moreover, high technology self-efficacy may weaken the relationship between technology overload and work stress.

The study may have sample bias because our sample was obtained from an online survey on social networking sites. Regarding the theoretical implications, this study demonstrated that technology overload, as an internal organism, is a critical mediator influencing the relationship between job demands (stimulus) and work stress (response). Thus, this study extended the applicability of the SOR model in the context of working with VCAs in organizations.

Company managers need to effectively control the information amount, communication interruptions and system features of social media at optimum levels for workers. Moreover, companies should recruit workers with high technology self-efficacy or provide technology training and technology-related consulting to those with low technology self-efficacy.

The extant work stress knowledge is extended to workers using VCAs in organizations.

The authors investigate the relationship between instant messenger (IM) use and work performance, mediated by interruptions and two key indicators of the stress associated with technology use: overload and complexity.

The authors validate this research model using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with data collected through a survey of 416 working professionals.

The data reveal that while IM use contributes minimally to work interruptions and to a greater extent to technological complexity, these two constructs fully mediate the direct influence of IM use at work on technology overload, and meanwhile significantly and directly contribute to work performance.

This research provides theoretical insights into the deployment of IM and its actual impacts in the workplace. To improve the generalisation of the findings, the authors call for more IM-related research in other countries, with more native theories and various methodologies in this domain.

The level of stress generated through IM use is moderate, considering IM is not a significant contributor to work interruptions. Thus, despite the potential negative effects of IM communication, the positive effects of using IM at work prevail. As a result, the technology can be promoted as long as employees, their managers and the organisation as a whole are well prepared. Employees can transfer skills and behaviour from the personal setting to their work environment and thus may find an intrinsic motivation to make better use of the IM technology at work.

The authors argue that this research model is novel for its perspective on evaluating the actual impacts of IM use at work instead of the reasons of using it. The authors conceptualise the process to explain how IM contributes to interruptions and other technostress indicators in the working context, and the impact on performance. Contrary to some prior research, the authors find that overall IM applications do not have a negative impact on work performance, and instead may enhance it.

With the prevalence of enterprise social media (ESM), this study examines how the innovative and routine ESM use behaviors in the post-acceptance stage influence the quality and quantity dimensions of information processing (i.e. information equality and information overload), subsequently affecting employee autonomy grounded in the digital information management theoretical (DIMT) framework. This study further explores the moderating effects of communication visibility on the relationships between employee autonomy and each of the two information processing factors.

The proposed theoretical model was empirically validated using survey data of 266 knowledge workers that use ESM in a hybrid working context.

The results demonstrate that innovative and routine ESM use have different impacts on the quality and quantity dimensions of information processing, and information equality (quality dimension) improves employee autonomy as expected, but, surprisingly, information overloads (quantity dimension) as well. ESM communication visibility positively moderates the relationship between employee autonomy and each dimension of information processing.

Prior studies on ESM use widely focused on ESM's positive and negative outcomes and the mechanisms from the perspectives of employees' psychological and cognitive reactions. How ESM use behaviors in the post-acceptance stage empower employee autonomy and allow organizations to leverage the organizations' information technology (IT) investments remains unclear. Drawing on the information processing perspective, this study provides a novel angle to examine how to leverage IT values that stem from ESM use by considering the complementary roles of active and passive information processing.

Personally owned mobile information and communication technologies (MICT) have been widely and routinely used for work purposes in the post-pandemic workplace. Drawing on adaptive structuration theory for individuals (ASTI), this study investigates the antecedents (i.e. characteristics of MICT) and outcomes (i.e. employee affective and cognitive well-being) of routine MICT use in the remote work context.

The research model was empirically tested via a survey of 430 working professionals who use personal MICT for work purposes in the remote work context.

Results show that the routine MICT use increases employee affective well-being (i.e. job satisfaction) and mitigates cognitive well-being (i.e. technology overload). The mediation effects of routine MICT use on the relationships between its characteristics (autonomy and timeliness) and employee well-being (i.e. job satisfaction and technology overload) were also found.

Existing research on remote work has widely focused on employee productivity and performance, while attention has rarely been paid to the effects of the technology-driven “new normal” on employee well-being. Grounded in ASTI, this study identifies three MICT characteristics as sources of user adaptive structuration, which impact employees' routine MICT use behavior and further influence employee affective and cognitive well-being. This research can help understand employees' personal MICT use adaptive behavior and improve their well-being.

Drawing on the transactional model of stress, this study develops a theoretical model to understand the lurking behavior on enterprise social media (ESM).

Based on a questionnaire survey, this research study collected valid data from 301 ESM users in the workplace. Hierarchical regression analyses are used to analyze the conceptual framework.

The results show that Zhongyong thinking is a significant predictor of lurking and emotional exhaustion and that lurking can cause emotional exhaustion. Lurking mediates the relationship between Zhongyong thinking and emotional exhaustion. Additionally, communication overload moderates the relationship between lurking and emotional exhaustion as well as the indirect relationship between Zhongyong thinking and emotional exhaustion through lurking.

This article examines the antecedents of lurking by considering Zhongyong thinking and explores how lurking on ESM influences emotional exhaustion. This research contributes to the literature on techno-stressors, lurking and ESM and hopefully contributes to the growing dialog about the consequences of lurking in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the complexity of how demands and stress are mitigated to enhance employee performance in remote working arrangements.

A time-lagged snowball sample of 223 full-time remote working adults in the United States participated in an online survey. Data were analyzed using R 4.0.2 and structural equation modeling.

Results suggest remote job resources involving organizational trust and work flexibility increase performance via serial mediation when considering information communication technology (ICT) demands and work–life interference (WLI). The findings provide insights into counterbalancing the negative aspects of specific demands and stress in remote work arrangements.

This study provides insights for managers to understand how basic job resources may shape perspectives on demands and WLI to impact performance. Specific to remote working arrangements, establishing trust with the employees and promoting accountability with their work flexibility can play an important part in people and their performance.

This study contributes theoretically to the literature by evidencing how components of the E-Work Life (EWL) scale can be used with greater versatility beyond the original composite measurement because of the job-demand resource (JD-R) framework and conservation of resources theory (COR). This study answers several calls by research to investigate how ICT demands and WLI play a complex role in work performance.

This study focuses on perceived overload from environmental stimuli and individual psychology and behavioral interactions. It constructs a theoretical model with overload as the key stressor based on the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model. The authors argue that system feature overload (SFO), information overload, and social overload lead to two psychological strains: fear of missing out (FoMO) and fatigue among users of short video platforms, affecting their discontinuous usage intentions.

To test the hypotheses, the authors conducted a questionnaire survey on 412 users' short video platform usage and empirically tested the constructed model using the research tool SmartPLS 3.3.2.

The results of data analysis showed that most of the hypotheses were supported. Specifically, system feature overload, information overload and social overload all positively affected FoMO. However, SFO and information overload significantly affected fatigue. There was no significant relationship between social overload and fatigue. In addition, both FoMO and fatigue negatively influenced users' discontinuous usage intentions.

The current research on user behavior in information systems tends to focus on the influence in the positive direction and less on the negative direction. The research on discontinuous usage intention (DUI) is a very new research topic. This research studies the influencing factors of users' discontinuous behavior from the perspective of perceptual overload. It provides a unique view for future short video platform user behavior research, with significant theoretical contributions and essential practice for short video platform operators to improve services.

Social media fatigue (SMF) has been widely recognized; however, previous studies have included various concepts into a single fatigue construct. Fatigue has typically been explored from the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) or stimulus-organism-response (SOR) perspectives. To further investigate SMF, the authors split it into the two constructs of exhaustion and disinterest. Furthermore, the authors introduced the concept of emotional labor and identified rules that may affect surface and deep acting strategies.

The authors designed and conducted a survey to collect data from social networking platform users.

Results from 364 users of social networking platforms supported most of the authors' hypotheses. First, most of the display rules affect the choice of deep or surface acting. Second, both types of acting lead to exhaustion, but only surface acting leads to disinterest. Third, discontinuance intention is affected by both types of fatigue.

This study contributes to SMF research by adding more antecedents (deep and surface acting) based on the emotional labor perspective and showing the impacts of communication rules on emotional labor. In addition, this study also distinguishes disinterest-style fatigue from exhaustion.

User discontinuance on short-video platform has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Short-video discontinuance refers to reduced use, controlled use or suspended use of the short-video platform. In this study, we examined factors associated with discontinuance behavior on short-video platform.

From the perspective of stressor–strain–outcome (SSO), we put forward a theoretical model integrating perceived information overload and perceived system feature overload (stressors), dissatisfaction (psychological strain), flow experience and regret to explain discontinuance behavior on short-video platform (behavioral outcome). We collected 482 survey data from Douyin users in China, and empirically examined the proposed research model via Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

Our results demonstrated that perceived system feature overload exerts a positive effect on perceived information overload. Perceived system feature overload has a stronger influence on dissatisfaction than perceived information overload. Regret increases user dissatisfaction, while flow experience decreases user dissatisfaction. We also discovered that dissatisfaction and regret have significant positive effects on discontinuance behavior. Interestingly, flow exerts no significant influence on discontinuance behavior.

This study enriches the body of knowledge on social media discontinuance by revealing the interaction and effects of flow experience, dissatisfaction and regret on discontinuance. This study also extends the understanding on the complex role of flow experience in leading to social media discontinuance. Additionally, this study deepens the research on the interaction between perceived system feature overload and perceived information overload as well as their different influences on negative emotion.

This study aims to investigate whether social media use (SMU) at work has a curvilinear effect on job performance and whether Cyberloafing (non-work-related use) and job complexity moderate this effect.

Online surveys were conducted in China among WeChat users from multiple organizations working in the office environment, generating 350 valid responses.

The results revealed that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between SMU at work and job performance through mediations of communication, information sharing and entertainment; such that the relationship is initially positive but becomes weaker as SMU increases and exceeds the optimal level. Notably, it is found that Cyberloafing negatively moderates the relationship between SMU and job performance, and there is a significant joint moderating effect of job complexity and Cyberloafing.

This study improves the research of information system use. It also provides implications for organizations concerned about formulating policies related to individuals' SMU and suggests that SM users and managers should find strategies to arrive at without surpassing the optimal level to maximize productivity.

This paper enriches the job demands-resources model to extend the literature on the advantages and disadvantages of SMU at work, which indirectly affect performance through two job conditions (job resources and demands). The study finds that employees benefit from a moderate amount of SMU at work, once it surpasses the optimal level, job demands surpass job resources and counterproductivity will appear. In addition, Cyberloafing and job complexity moderate the optimal level of SMU at work, which have not yet been investigated.