Lose at sunrise,but gain at sunset: Linking social cyberloafing to psychological detachment,personal life enhancement of work,and mental health

1.1 Research background

In general terms, mental health (MH) refers to “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community” [1]. MH is critical to employees’ productivity and the organizational stability [2]. Employees’ MH largely depends on the work environment, although work and nonwork contexts are intimately connected [3, 4]. Research has found that some factors from the workplace context, such as self-management and organizational management [5], flexible working hours, rich communication, and management practices [6], have positive implications for employee MH. Nevertheless, recent management studies have paid little attention to whether some factors experienced beyond the work domain can be carried over to the workplace and improve MH. One factor experienced beyond the work domain that may be in an optimal position to foster connections and spillover between work and nonwork settings is cyberloafing activities or the personal use of private organizational IT resources [7]. Yet, it is unclear whether the enhancement that cyberloafing builds up in the nonwork domain is helpful to the workplace in terms of personal life enhancement of work and MH.

With the popularity of mobile devices, a larger number of employees use the Internet for nonwork-related activities at work, a practice known as cyberloafing in organizational behavior literature [7]. Existing studies have demonstrated that cyberloafing is a counterproductive work behavior (e.g., Blanchard and Henle [8]) that, framed within so-called ‘job neglect’, reduces organizational citizenship behavior [9] and job performance [10]. However, the emphasis of previous research has mainly been on overall cyberloafing activities and their effect on employee outcomes, thus ignoring the detailed impact of specific types of cyberloafing activities. Because different types of cyberloafing activities can produce different, even opposite effects on employees’ emotional states [11], studies have revealed that a compensation effect can exist in some forms of cyberloafing in managing resources to reduce job burnout (via job stress) [12]. As such, it has been argued that this compensation effect occurring in certain types of cyberloafing may balance work and personal life and relax the individual’s body and mind [13]. This could be the case of ‘social’ cyberloafing, which, by focusing on social media activities, may be in an optimal position to create a social environment conducive to the improvement in MH. The popularity of social cyberloafing has recently increased inexorably. For example, a recent survey holds that social media users account for 93.33% of Internet users worldwide [14]. Furthermore, because social media such as WeChat and Facebook continues to grow in the workplace, the widespread and frequent use of social media has led conventional cyberloafing to be performed as ‘social’ cyberloafing [15], with even more significant blurring of the nonwork-work boundary among employees.

The present study aims to reveal the life enhancement effect of social cyberloafing on employee MH by integrating the conservation of resources (COR) theory and insights from work/nonwork enhancement literature. COR theory states that social activities in the workplace can help employees to cope with stress by helping them recover from resource loss and/or acquire new resources [16–18]. Previous work has found that social cyberloafing improves MH by eliciting psychological detachment in employees [19]. Therefore, psychological detachment (hereinafter, PD) may be involved in the underlying mechanism that makes possible that cyberloafing influences MH through personal life enhancement of work. Psychological detachment (PD) is defined as an experience that individuals are psychologically disengaged from job-related demands and tasks [20]. Further, grounded on COR theory, work/nonwork enhancement literature has suggested that personal resources may be renewed or generated by participating in actions in one domain that could then be helpful for successful engagement in another role in another domain [21]. Therefore, the activities of individuals in nonwork domains may provide opportunities for resource gaining that, rather than exhaust energy, energize them for work [22]. Drawing on COR theory and work/nonwork enhancement literatures, we propose that PD and personal life enhancement of work results in two mechanisms that can explain why social cyberloafing affects MH; these are, a) demand-shielding process for PD, and b) resource-building process for personal life enhancement of work.

To summarize, the present study seeks to answer the following two questions: a) Is social cyberloafing positively related to employees’ MH? and b) Is the positive relationship between social cyberloafing and employees’ MH mediated by PD and personal life enhancement of work? Responding to these two questions this paper aims to enrich the occupational health literature by providing insights about the mechanisms linking social cyberloafing to MH.

1.2 Research hypotheses

Psychological detachment usually leads individuals to be away from work on a physical and mental level [20], allowing them to better control their stress and stress responses [23]. Compared to highly stressful tasks, employees have a greater chance of experiencing PD from work when performing relaxing and leisure activities, such as ‘social’ cyberloafing activities. Previous research has shown the promotional effect of PD on employees’ MH [24–26]. Employees engaging in social cyberloafing activities are less likely to have work-related thoughts, thus increasing their PD. Allowing them to delay the depletion of resources, PD can shield employees from job demands, temporarily alleviating the stress and fatigue caused by these demands. In the end, through PD, social cyberloafing may reduce or eliminate stress responses to job demands and prevent harm to employees’ MH [25]. Therefore, we predict that social cyberloafing can function as a shield against job demands in the work process by leading employees to experience immediate PD, keeping them away from work temporarily through a demand-shielding process. Accordingly, we proposed that:

Social cyberloafing may also increase MH through other processes, i.e., resource building, which can be acquired in both work and nonwork domains. Personal life enhancement of work refers to the fact that the positive emotions, experiences, and skills individuals acquire beyond the work field are transferred to and experienced within the work field [27]. In this regard, social cyberloafing would replenish employees by providing new positive emotions, supporting experiences, and social skills, which are available in the workplace through personal life enhancement of work. Resources building process occurs because social cyberloafing at work enhances employees’ opportunities to socially interact with friends and family, thus allowing them to enjoy their own relaxing and leisure time and then enhance their work. Moreover, personal life enhancement of work has been found to help employees gain new resources from the nonwork domain that replenish the resources they lose due to job demands [28–30]. In the end, social cyberloafing may affect the personal life enhancement of work and provide employees with new job resources to meet job demands, thus reducing their likelihood of experiencing burnout and stress. Therefore, we proposed that:

Prior studies have indicated that employees with high levels of PD are not only cognitively distant from work-related thoughts, but they also experience more positive emotions and fewer negative ones [31], thus boosting work motivation and pro-organizational behavior [29]. Furthermore, additional recent research shows that PD helps employees to recover from the workload in a timely way, providing them with increased work engagement [32], resources, and an energy base to cope with subsequent job demands [33] and combat burnout [32]. This means that PD, a demand-shielding process, may not only influence employees’ MH independently, but may also influence MH by interacting with the resource-building processes (i.e., personal life enhancement of work). Thus, we proposed:

2.1 Participants

Because an online survey protects their privacy better and, thus, generates higher reliability in collecting data on deviant behaviors (e.g., social cyberloafing in this study) [34], we did not ask them to fill out a paper questionnaire due to the risk that they may not be willing to report real data out of a desire for self-protection [35]. Therefore, this study designed and distributed questionnaires through an online survey company, i.e., Wenjuanxing (www.wjx.cn), covering more than 30,000 companies and 90% of Chinese universities. We asked the online survey company to collect data through a paid service and use random sampling to distribute online questionnaire links or QR codes to its 2.6 million Internet users from Chinese companies. A total of 470 online questionnaires were distributed, and eight days later, 375 of them were fully completed and retained, representing a valid response rate of 79.79%. In line with Ren, Chadee and Wang [36], we compared the first and the last 10% of respondents to test nonresponse bias, and found no significant differences between the two groups on focal and demographic variables.

The sample comprises 206 (54.9%) female and 169 (45.1%) male employees. Specifically, 108 (28.8%) of them were single, 45 (12.0%) were married without children, and 222 (59.2%) were married with children. Moreover, 209 (55.7%) were 27– 37 years old, 99 (26.4%) were under 27 years old, 55 (14.7%) were 37– 47 years old, and 12 (3.2%) were 47 or older. Regarding their positions, 149 (39.7%) were frontline employees, 126 (33.6%) were line managers, 87 (23.2%) were middle managers, and 13 (3.5%) were senior managers. The participants were evenly distributed among different income and work experience groups: less than 3000 Yuan (36(9.6%)), between 3001 and 5000 Yuan (100(26.7%)), between 5001 and 10000 Yuan (191(50.9%)), and more than 10000 Yuan (48(12.8%)); less than 3 years (88 (23.5%)), between 4 and 6 years (97(25.9%)), between 7 and 9 years (88(23.5%)), and more than 10 years (102(27.2%)). The most common educational level was university or Junior college (325 (86.7%)), followed by Master or above (34 (9.1%)) and Junior high school or below (16 (4.3%)). In terms of time spent on social media per day, 20(5.3%) spent no more than 1 hour, 106(28.3%) spent 1– 2 hours, 143(38.1%) spent 2– 3 hours, 81(21.6%) spent 3– 5 hours, and 25(6.7%) spent more than 5 hours. In terms of frequency of social media usage per day, 2(0.5%) were never, 98(26.1%) were 1– 5 times per day, 150(40.0%) were 6– 10 times per day, 78(20.8%) were 11– 20 times per day, 47(12.5%) were more than 20 times per day.

2.2 Measures

2.2.3 Personal life enhancement of work

We measured personal life enhancement of work with three items developed by Fisher, Bulger [27]. A sample item for personal life enhancement of work is “My personal life gives me the energy to do my job". Items responses were designed from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbach’s α of the scale in our sample is 0.805.

3.1 Common method bias test

Harman’s one-factor test showed that the first component only explained 29.32% of the variance, suggesting that common method bias does not significantly contaminate our results. The CFA results showed that the hypothesized four-factor measurement model (χ²/df = 1.858, RMSEA = 0.048, CFI = 0.964, TLI = 0.956, SRMR = 0.041) was significantly better than the single-factor measurement model (χ²/df = 11.75, RMSEA = 0.169, CFI = 0.520, TLI = 0.446, SRMR = 0.169), thus indicating a minimal presence of common method bias.

3.2 Preliminary analysis

Table 1 displayed the means, standard deviations (SD), and correlations of all study variables. Overall, respondents reported moderate perceptions of social cyberloafing (M = 2.93, SD = 0.81) and PD (M = 3.00, SD = 0.85). They showed positive evaluations of personal life enhancement of work (M = 3.95, SD = 0.67) and MH (M = 3.80, SD = 0.64). Correlation analysis suggests that social cyberloafing was positively correlated with PD (r = 0.417, p < 0.001) and MH (r = 0.098, p < 0.05). PD showed positive correlations with personal life enhancement of work (r = 0.125, p < 0.01) and MH (r = 0.204, p < 0.001). Personal life enhancement of work was positively correlated with MH (r = 0.693, p < 0.001), but not with social cyberloafing (r = 0.038, p > 0.05).

The results showed a good overall fit of structural model (χ²/df = 1.791, RMSEA = 0.043, CFI = 0.938, TLI = 0.924, SRMR = 0.048). The standardized betas for the final model, shown in Fig. 1, indicate that our hypothesized model explains 49.5% of the variance in MH. After accounting for the control variables, the results showed that the relationship between social cyberloafing and PD was significant and positive (β= 0.417, p < 0.001), which supported Hypothesis 1. Furthermore, PD was positively related to personal life enhancement of work (β= 0.132, p < 0.05) and MH (β= 0.107, p < 0.05). Personal life enhancement of work was positively and significantly related to MH (β= 0.679, p < 0.001). However, the positive relationship between social cyberloafing and personal life enhancement of work was insignificant (β= – 0.017, p > 0.10), rejectingHypothesis 3.

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Fig. 1

Results of the hypothesized model. Note: ^*p < 0.05, ^**p < 0.01, ^***p < 0.001.

In addition, we tested the mediation effect of PD and personal life enhancement of work on the cyberloafing-MH link using the Bias-Corrected Bootstrap method with Mplus 7.4, and reported the results in Table 2. The findings suggested that social cyberloafing was related to MH through the mediation of PD because the bias-corrected 95% confidence interval [0.012, 0.067] did not contain 0, thus supporting Hypothesis 2. However, personal life enhancement of work was not found to mediate the relationship between social cyberloafing and MH because the 95% confidence interval [– 0.062, 0.045] contains 0, thus leaving Hypothesis 4 unsupported. Further, social cyberloafing was related to MH through a serial mediation of PD and personal life enhancement of work, given that the 95% confidence interval [0.009, 0.058] did not contain 0, thus supporting Hypothesis 5.

4.1 Theoretical implications

Our research makes several theoretical contributions. First, because PD was used as a marker for demand shielding and resource-building, this study finding the positive correlation between cyberloafing and MH may suggest correlation with demand shielding and resource-building. Accordingly, this finding enriches the social cyberloafing literature by suggesting research avenues capable of providing more profound insight into the two underlying mechanisms (i.e., demand-shielding and resource-building) in explaining how social cyberloafing correlates with MH. Although the mediating effect of personal life enhancement of work alone was not significant, combined with PD in the serial mediation, personal life enhancement of work was supported as a significant mediator. These findings suggest that PD may be able to shield work demands and then repair and rebuild resources, thus enhancing work recovery [47] and positive experiences of personal life enhancement of work. Indeed, because PD activates personal life enhancement of work, it allows employees to have more energy and motivation to devote to subsequent work. Hence, this study found that, in the social cyberloafing-MH link, the mutual presence of demand-shielding and resource-building processes of social cyberloafing can provide a richer understanding of why social cyberloafing positively affects MH. This is a significant contribution that extends previous findings by Wu, Mei and Liu [19] that only focused on the demand-shielding mechanism of PD. Our study, however, extends these findings by showing that PD is not only a mediator that explains why cyberloafing improves employees’ MH, but it is also an ‘activator’ of personal life enhancement of work. In other words, it is a stimulus that can lead the enrichment outside work domains to influence the cyberloafing-MH link in the workplace.

Second, employee health has been discussed as a critical factor affecting long-term organizational success and stability [48]. Unfortunately, however, existing management research has focused more on organizational performance and individual work outcomes, paying little attention to employee health outcomes [49]. In this research, we contribute to the occupational health and wellness literature by increasing the understanding of how social cyberloafing promotes employee MH. Furthermore, in doing so, our findings highlight that the polyhedral nature of cyberloafing activity means that it can be counterproductive, but it can also allow employees to cope better with work stressors, thus responding to a number of calls for studies on managing employee stress and health [48].

Third, the present research also contributes to the literature on job recovery based on PD during work time. Considering that work demands take up most employees’ time, until now it has been critical to increase employee health by focusing on immediate rather than off-job recovery. This excessive focus on immediate recovery has motivated scholars to focus on the possibility of recovery occurring during work breaks [16, 50]. Due to this concern, Sonnentag and Fritz [51] called for examining the effects of PD during working time in the digital age. This study investigates the effect of social cyberloafing at work on PD, and it is also a response to the call. And it helps managers to have a broader and richer positive recovery strategy in the workplace by extending its effects to personal life enhancementof work.

4.2 Practical implications

Given that a growing number of employees all over the world are facing poor MH [19, 52], which contributes to disability and diminished work functioning [19, 53], lower performance and productivity [54], and increased economic burden for society [55], these study findings can have practical implications for organizations and employees. In current workplaces, job demands are increasingly stressful, and although managers are aware of these stressors, they cannot solve them overnight. The present research suggests a novel and effective way to deal with this issue. We found that social cyberloafing can promote MH by increasing personal life enhancement of work subsequent to PD. However, as previous studies have suggested, being too strict about cyberloafing may reduce access to potential benefits, while being too lenient can be costly [11]. To reduce the costs of poor MH, managers can allow employees to engage in appropriate social cyberloafing activities during workplace. Precisely, managers should go beyond the continuing debates about whether social cyberloafing should be strongly restricted, and instead increase employees’ job autonomy regarding whether to engage in social cyberloafing activities [56]. Appropriate social cyberloafing activities can be a vital non-work activity that helps employees replenish resources, thusimproving MH.

4.3 Limitations and future directions

This study makes contributions to better understanding the relationship between social cyberloafing and employee MH. However, we acknowledge that there are several limitations that should be considered. First, the data in this study are cross-sectional, which may not accurately reflect the dynamic characteristics of the variables. Future research could consider collecting data through multiple measurement methods (e.g., experimental study, experience sampling, and diary observation). Moreover, the dramatic changes in the work environment at digital workplace also raise new issues for future research on the impact of social cyberloafing, such as activities identified as minor cyberloafing may be considered as normal behavior in this context [57]. Thus, future research could conceptualize the definition of cyberloafing with the combination of semi-structured interviews (e.g., employees and employers reconcile their consensus about the definition of cyberloafing) and quantitative research to develop our study [58]. Future research can also examine other mediators that embody the demand-shielding and resource-building processes, in addition to PD and personal life enhancement of work. In this regard, follow-up studies can benefit from identifying mediators such as other types of recovery experiences [20] and basic psychological needs [59]. Finally, considering that the linear relationship between social cyberloafing and personal life enhancement of work is not significant in this study, future studies can examine the potential non-linear relationship.