Scrolling away from our insecurity. The mediating role of affective job satisfaction in the relationship between job insecurity and cyberloafing

Abstract

Cyberloafing, namely the use of the Internet during working hours for personal purposes, has gained increasing popularity in literature; however, the underlying job stressors and processes driving its occurrence remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources Theory and the Social Exchange Theory, the present study extends this literature by examining whether a critical contemporary job stressor (i.e. job insecurity) influences the tendency to engage in cyberloafing. Although job insecurity has the inner potential to both facilitate and inhibit the occurrence of cyberloafing (as an attempt to secure one’s employment), we suggest affective job (dis)satisfaction as a potential explanatory mechanism through which job insecurity may facilitate this withdrawal behaviour. A sample of 426 Italian employees (62.7% female) completed an online survey in two waves with a one-month lag. The findings reveal that job insecurity operates as a resource-draining and emotion-inducing condition that indirectly contributes to increased cyberloafing by diminishing affective job satisfaction. Our study provides new insights into the job – and individual-related mechanisms that affect cyberloafing, highlighting the crucial role of job insecurity and its emotional consequences in shaping this digitally mediated employee behaviour.