Capturing the complexity of appropriate use of smartphone

Abstract

With the development of technology, the young generations become more receptive of new forms of media such as smartphone. Soon after the adoption of smartphone increased dramatically, smartphone overuse ？ one typical example of inappropriate use of technology - become a big problem for lots of smartphone users. Consequently, considerable effort has be given to researches that help me to reduce the use or to keep them away from their smartphone. However, there are not only dark side of using technology, simply keep people away from technology will also reduce the potential benefits they could otherwise get from using it. Instead of simply encourage the usage or reduce the extent of using technology, it would be more important to guide people to use technology appropriately. In the absence of knowledge of operational definition of appropriate use of technology, in this research, we aim to conceptualize the appropriate use of technology from the goal-congruence perspective, and using smartphone - as the tool for the theoretical model testing. In this study, we operationalized the definition of appropriate use of technology as the extent to which the daily striving of using technology support or congruent with users’ long-term goals while reflect the contextual emphasis. To test and valid the new concept of appropriate use of technology, a comprehensive study includes three times of questionnaire and empirical data collection that lasted for 26 days was conducted Two related studies were conducted in this research. In the first one, the operational definition and determinants of appropriate use of technology was developed and the measurements was tested using the Social-cognitive Theory (SCT). The results suggested our new definition and measurement has a good validity and reliability, was well as could be well-explained by social-cognitive variable. In addition, the model testing result suggested that self-regulation played a direct and central role in determining the appropriateness of using smartphone. All of the rest social-cognitive variables showed an indirect effect on the appropriate use of smartphone through self-regulation. The second study aimed to explore the determinants of users’ behavioral intention to adjust their way of using smartphone towards a more appropriate direction based on the Theory of Planed Behavior (TPB). The results shows that the attitude towards behavioral change fully mediated the effect of perceived discrepancy on behavioral change intention. Also, the inertia demonstrated both a significant direct negative effect and an indirect effect through attitude on behavioral change intention. However, the PBC and subjective norm failed to show a signification effect on behavioral change intention in the current study.