Understanding the influence of problematic smartphone use on work productivity in the post-COVID-19 pandemic

The unfamiliar and unusual stressful conditions due to COVID-19 have motivated employees to excessively use smartphones for non-work-related activities to alleviate the negative feelings associated with these stressful conditions. To conceptualize our research model, we employed the Compensatory Internet Use Theory (CIUT), which is associated with problematic technology usage. The proposed model investigates the influence of the following negative factors that emerged because of COVID-19 as the determinants of problematic smartphone use (PSU): remote work arrangement (RWA), intolerance of uncertainty (IU), COVID-19 anxiety (CA), and social isolation (ISO). In addition, we suggest that, although employees tend to use smartphones excessively to alleviate stressful life conditions, these conditions (RWA, IU, CA, and ISO) will lead to emotional exhaustion (EE), which will consequently result in the excessive use of smartphones. Furthermore, we are investigating the influence of PSU on employee work productivity. Finally, we are also interested in exploring the moderating role of gender in the relationships within our model. The results have shown that all hypotheses are supported, except for the influence of RWA on EE and PSU, and the influence of CA on PSU. We believe that our findings will provide researchers and businesses with a deeper understanding of this critical issue, especially in the context of smartphone usage at work.