The Shady Side Of Facebook: The Influence Of Perceived Information And Network Characteristics On The Attitude Towards Information Overload

This research paper analyzes the impact of information and network characteristics on the affective, cognitive, and behavioral attitude towards information overload (IO) on Facebook. By using an information overload model and the data of 300 active Facebook users it can be shown that the various categories of attitude are influenced by different factors. The level of determination of the behavioral attitude towards IO is lower than the level of determination of the affective and cognitive attitude towards IO. The identified antecedents of IO explain up to 36 per cent of the variance of IO. Results indicate that affective and cognitive attitude towards IO are more influenced by these antecedents as the behavioral attitude towards IO. Furthermore, results reveal that the amount of information an individual receives is the major predictor of all three dimensions of attitude. Several implications for adoption research are discussed.