Compulsive mobile application usage and technostress: the role of personality traits
| Pages | 272-295 |
| Published date | 10 April 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2016-0091 |
| Date | 10 April 2017 |
| Author | Kuo-Lun Hsiao |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Compulsive mobile application
usage and technostress: the role
of personality traits
Kuo-Lun Hsiao
National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Compulsive usage of mobile applications may have a negative effect on people’s health and social
interaction. Past studies have indicated that personality traits were related to compulsive usage of
technologies, but most of them have explored the factors from the system and interface design perspectives,
specifically. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the Big Five personality traits, materialism, and
external locus of control affect compulsive mobile application usage, and examines how compulsive usage
impacts technostress.
Design/methodology/approach –The present study proposes a framework based on Big Five personality
traits and related literature. The author collected a total of 546 valid responses to the online survey, and the
author examined the 18 proposed hypotheses using SmartPLS software.
Findings –The results show that neuroticism, extraversion, materialism, and external locus of control have
significant effects on compulsive usage of mobile social applications. In addition, agreeableness, materialism,
and external locus of control significantly influence compulsive usage of mobile game applications.
Compulsive usage (of both mobile social apps and mobile games), materialism, and external locus of control
all have a positive, direct impact on technostress.
Practical implications –This study offers mobile app design companies and educational institutions a
understanding of the social problems caused by the misuse of mobile devices, helping them to prevent the
increase of the negative influences of such misuse.
Originality/value –The primary value of this paper lies in providing a better understanding of the
influence of personality traits on the compulsive use of mobile apps and technostress.
Keywords Mobile applications, Technostress, Personality traits, Compulsive usage
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
With the development of mobile technology, mobile devices have become a necessity for
many people. An increasing array of services is provided via mobile devices and the internet
to help people with their daily lives. For example, people can shop, make payments, book
tickets, and watch videos using these devices. Software applications designed to run on
mobile services are called mobile applications, or “apps.”Mobile apps can be classified into
categories such as games, social networking, entertainment, and finance. People can select,
and download the mobile apps they need to accomplish tasks that require computing power
(Hung et al., 2015).
Statista (2016), a statistics company, reported that the number of mobile apps was about
1.5 million in total in June 2015. Users can download most of the apps from Apple App Store
or Google Play. In particular, social networking apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter, and game apps are two of the most popular apps. In America, about 68 percent of
online Facebook minutes were via mobile social apps in February 2014 (Statista, 2015).
The mobile device users spent more than 114 billion minutes on Facebook totally.
In addition, it is predicted that the number of mobile gaming users will grow gradually and
users will spend more time on the games (eMarketer, 2015).
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 2, 2017
pp. 272-295
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-03-2016-0091
Received 18 March 2016
Revised 13 October 2016
Accepted 30 November 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China for supporting this
study financially (Contract No. 104-2410-H-025-011).
272
OIR
41,2
Although mobile apps make our lives easier and bring enjoyment into our lives, they can
raise many concerns when not properly used. Some researchers have indicated that a
relationship can be drawn between personality traits and smartphone use. People with
specific types of personalities tend to overuse smartphones (Lee et al., 2014). Roberts
et al. (2015) examined the relationship between the “Big Five personality traits”
(i.e. openness, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) and
smartphone addiction. They demonstrated that personality traits have an impact on the
addictive use of smartphones.
Oulasvirta et al. (2012) indicated that some users check their smartphones constantly
even when it is unnecessary. These users have developed a checking habit. Other users may
get anxious when unable to reply immediately to missed calls or instant messages.
This anxiety can lead to obsessive phone usage and compulsive behavior such as habitual
phone checking(Lee et al., 2014). Furthermore, increasedtime spent using mobile devicesmay
negatively affect users’social relationships and cause psychological stress, thus decreasing
well-being. Therefore, it is important to explore the antecedents of compulsive behavior.
Lee et al. (2014) indicated that certain personality traits such as materialism and external
locus of control are important predictors of compulsive smartphone use and, as such, cause
technostress. Technostress is defined as a modern disease of adaptation caused by an
inability to cope with technology or techniques in a healthy way. It can be caused by
communication or information overload. In other words, technostress is a kind of stress that
stems from using technology, and it has a negative impact on users’lives. In serious cases,
technostress can lead to bipolar disorder and depression.
Past researcher indicated that the antecendents of compulsive use and technostress in
different context may be dissimliar (Tarafdar et al., 2015). The role of personality traits in
compulsive use and technostress also has been widely examined (Srivastava et al., 2015).
Though past studies have demonstrated the relationships between personality traits and
compulsive behavior (Lee et al., 2014; Hung et al., 2015; Tang et al., 2016), few have used
personality traits to explore the factors that impact the compulsive use of mobile social apps
and game apps. For example, Maier et al. (2015) found that social overload and disclosure
will significantly affect the stress on social networking sites (SNSs); Hung et al. (2015)
indicated that people who lack proactive personality traits have lower tolerance for
technostress. However, the influence of personality traits on compulsive use of mobile apps
and technology-related stress has not been well-examined, leaving a significant research
gap (Srivastava et al., 2015). On the basis of the research background, this study focuses on
the research gaps and addresses the following research questions:
RQ1. How do Big Five personality traits influence the compulsive use of mobile apps?
RQ2. Do the compulsive use of different mobile apps increase technostress?
RQ3. Do materialism and external locus of control affect the compulsive use of mobile
apps and technostress?
Hence, this study adopts the construct of personality traits to investigate the antecendents
of compulsive use of different mobile apps, and to examine the relationship between such
behavior and technostress.
Literature review
Mobile apps
A mobile app is a computer program designed to run on a mobile device such as a
smartphone or tablet. According to Google Play, the official app store for the Android
operating system, mobile apps can be classified into various categories, and the “games”
category can be broken down into 18 subcategories, which shows the popularity of games.
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application
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