Explaining Information Technology Users' Ways of Mitigating Technostress

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.