Social Media Addiction of Employees: Does it Affect Labor Supply?

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to identify the impact of social media addiction on the labour supply of employees in Sri Lanka. The study covers 390 employees through a questionnaire survey. The study used the endogenous switching regression model for modelling average working hours per week day of social media addicts and non-addicts comparatively. Age, marital status, executive employment, type of social media and commuting distance to the workplace are the key factors associated with social media addiction of workers as in the selection function of the model. Working hours of social media addicts are affected by age, gender and executive employment while the working hours of non addicts are mainly affected by gender, marriage, executive employment, years of education and monthly net salary. Social media addiction of non addicts causes reduction of average hours of work per week day, while hours of work of social media addicts increase, if they have given up social media addiction. Institution specific policy insights are also proposed to increase the performance of employees.