Skip to main content
Article
Explaining Information Technology Users' Ways of Mitigating Technostress
Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (2017, Guimaraes, Portugal)
  • M. Salo
  • H. Pirkkalainen
  • Cecil Eng Huang Chua, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • T. Koskelainen
Abstract

Technostress refers to the inability of an individual to deal with information technology (IT) in a healthy manner. Researchers, practitioners, and medical professionals have emphasized the omnipresence of technostress and its severe outcomes, including poor well-being and burnout. Despite the importance of the phenomenon, prior research has paid limited attention to how technostress can be mitigated. The few existing studies examine organizational mitigation mechanisms, but we could not find any studies that focus on individual IT users' own ways of mitigating technostress outside of work. To address the research gap, we conducted a qualitative study to uncover users' ways of mitigating technostress caused by personal/leisure IT. As a theoretical contribution, we offer a new perspective on technostress by applying an approach of stress interventions and refining it to the technostress context. This enabled us to uncover three fundamentally different mitigation types that IT users can utilize. As such, our findings go beyond the organizational mechanisms that prior studies have focused on. As a practical contribution, our resulting model presents ways for individual IT users to decrease technostress.

Meeting Name
25th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2017 (2017: Jun. 5-10, Guimaraes, Portugal)
Department(s)
Business and Information Technology
Keywords and Phrases
  • Coping,
  • Intervention,
  • IT use,
  • Mitigation,
  • Technostress
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
978-099155670-0
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2017 Association for Information Systems (AIS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
6-1-2017
Publication Date
01 Jun 2017
Disciplines
Citation Information
M. Salo, H. Pirkkalainen, Cecil Eng Huang Chua and T. Koskelainen. "Explaining Information Technology Users' Ways of Mitigating Technostress" Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (2017, Guimaraes, Portugal) (2017) p. 2460 - 2476
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/cecil-chua/17/