Untangling the Adverse Effect of SNS Stressors on Academic Performance and Its Impact on Students’ Social Media Discontinuation Intention: The Moderating Role of Guilt

In recent research on information systems (IS), the advantages of social networking sites (SNS) in the education field have received widespread attention. However, excessive use of SNSs will negatively impact students academic performance, leading to the discontinuation intentions of social media. Therefore, this study aims to investigate an extended research model drawing on the stress-strain-outcome (SSO) theory and transactional model of stress to examine the adverse effect of SNS stressors on academic performance. The required data from the target population was collected through a structured questionnaire. The valid sample size of this study was n = 505 respondents. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS (version 23.0) to examine the study hypotheses. The results confirmed that the SNS stressors, namely, social overload, information overload, and system feature overload, induce strain in terms of poor academic performance by generating feelings of guilt. It also unravels the effect of guilt feelings on discontinuance intention indirectly. This study offers imperative theoretical and practical implications.