On Technostress and Emotion: A Narrative Approach

Abstract

Emotion in the context of technostress has been treated by IS researchers as highly general and vague. Little is therefore known about how individuals experience specific emotions when undergoing technostress. This paper is a first step towards understanding how to uncover the relationship between technostress (more specifically techno-stressors) and emotion through a narrative approach. Drawing on The Holistic Technostress Model as a theoretical foundation, and guided by research on psychological stress and emotion, the paper advocates for using emotion narratives to create stories about how emotions are experienced during stressful situations involving technology. The paper illustrates how six hypothetical emotion narratives related to technostress: anger, envy, relief, hope, happiness-joy, and pride. The paper also discusses how IS researchers can use emotion narratives in a variety of empirical studies, such as in survey and qualitative research designs and mixed-methods approaches.