Although much research has been performed on the adoption and usage phases of the information systems life cycle, the final phase, termination, has received little attention. This paper focuses on the development of discontinuous usage intentions, i.e. the behavioural intention in the termination phase, in the context of social networking services (SNSs), where it plays an especially crucial role. We argue that users stressed by using SNSs try to avoid the stress and develop discontinuous usage intentions, which we identify as a behavioural response to SNS‐stress creators and SNS‐exhaustion. Furthermore, as discontinuing the use of an SNS also takes effort and has costs, we theorize that switching‐stress creators and switching‐exhaustion reduce discontinuous usage intentions. We tested and validated these effects empirically in an experimental setting monitoring individuals who stopped using Facebook for a certain period and switched to alternatives. Our results show that SNS‐stress creators and SNS‐exhaustion cause discontinuous usage intentions, and switching‐stress creators and switching‐exhaustion reduce these intentions.

As technostress costs organizations financial resources and threatens the well-being, it is essential for users as well as companies to manage technostress. To do so, users cope proactive by removing or reducing techno-stressors or reactive by restoring users' emotional state. However, literature is limited by explaining what factors lead to proactive and reactive coping in a short-term technostress situation. The present paper addresses these shortcomings by investigating in how techno-stressors and emotional exhaustion influences proactive and reactive coping. Results based on 110 users show that users respond to techno-stressors in a proactive way, whereas users reactively respond to emotional exhaustion. In addition, proactive coping is stronger affected by technostressors, and reactive coping is stronger affected by emotional exhaustion. Thereby, we contribute to technostress and coping literature by demonstrating how users respond in short-term technostress situation and highlight the importance of time in the present context.

In situations when Information Systems (IS) do not work as intended, using IS might hinder their users and let them perceive technostress; this then comes along with reduced user performance and high perceptions of exhaustion, among others. To alleviate these consequences, a mitigating behavior of stressed users is to seek social support to get instrumental (e.g., from the help desk) or emotional (e.g., consolation) backing. Using insights from psychology literature that suggest social support reduces the consequences of stressors, this paper investigates how instrumental and emotional support reduces the consequences of techno-stressors, such as reduced end-user performance, techno-exhaustion, and physiological arousal, caused by techno-unreliability such as a computer freeze. In a laboratory setting, measurements of skin conductance were used to evaluate the technostress of 73 subjects, manipulated by techno-unreliability and then treated with instrumental and emotional support. The findings indicate that social support increased end-user performance as well as reduced techno-exhaustion and physiological arousal. In particular, instrumental support directly influenced enduser performance, techno-exhaustion, and physiological arousal, whereas emotional support only influenced techno-exhaustion. Further, this study provides the first indications that the effect of social support on technostress depends on individual differences.

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Despite the wide dissemination and acceptance of teleworking in the IT industry, companies like Yahoo!, HP, or Best Buy have stopped their telework programs, which indicates that there might also be some negative side effects in this type of work. In regard to this, our research focuses on one particular negative side of teleworking by focusing on teleworking-induced stress of IT professionals. We theorize that teleworking-induced stressors influence IT personnel's psychological and behavioral strain in the form of exhaustion due to teleworking and discontinuous intention towards teleworking. Results of an empirical online survey with 57 IT professionals validate these dependencies, which gives us the grounds to identify work overload, work-home conflict, information underload, and social isolation as influence factors of exhaustion due to teleworking. Further results reveal that discontinuous intentions towards teleworking is directly influenced by social isolation and exhaustion due to teleworking, whereas the influence of work overload is mediated by exhaustion due to teleworking. Work overload due to telework has the strongest effect on exhaustion due to teleworking, which in turn is the strongest influence factor on the discontinuous intention towards teleworking.