University students' perceived information overload mediates smartphone immediate response syndrome during COVID-19 outbreak: Taking the perspective of personality

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected university students’ learning and social interaction to a large level, causing different degrees of negative emotions and made them extremely sensitive to smartphone information. However, little is known about the link between personalities, perceived information overload (PIO) and smartphone immediate response syndrome (SIRS) during students' learning process in this specific emergency social context. Therefore, based on the person-environment fit model, this study investigated 482 university students from mainland China during the epidemic by a snowball sampling approach, and analyzed the relationship between their personalities, PIO and SIRS by structural equation modeling. Results indicated that individuals with extraversion and neuroticism formed SIRS from different psychological paths. PIO plays a partial mediating role between neuroticism and SIRS and a fully mediating role between extraversion and SIRS. These findings validate the association among individual personality, PIO and SIRS in the non-conventional environment and highlights the difference exist in cellphone-related psychological path between extraverted and neurotic students. Therefore, it is recommended that PIO should be controlled in a targeted manner for individuals with different personality and guide them using cellphones rationally during the epidemic.