Discontinuance Intention of Online Shoppers Due to Techno Stress: An S-O-R Perspective

Abstract

Mobile applications have gained a high proliferation due to the advent of smart phones in the market at a lower cost. Despite the increasing popularity of mobile applications in business, a pattern of clients quitting these applications has emerged in recent years. With the use of the Stimulus Organism Response (SOR) Model from the field of environmental psychology, this study focuses on user abandonment of shopping apps. Four important environmental stimuli factors viz. complexity, uncertainty, invasion, and information overload were compared with two important internal states of the organism i.e., techno-stress and online shopping exhaustion; thereby leading to the response of discontinuance intentions. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to ensure that the constructs were legitimate, and structural equation modelling was used to test and validate the hypothesized model. The findings revealed that all stimulus elements had a beneficial impact on the interior states of the organism, and that these internal states also had a good impact on the intention to discontinue shopping online. Information overload was the most influential factor of techno-stress and invasion was the most persuasive factor of online shopping exhaustion. Among the two internal states, techno-stress had more impact on the intentions to discontinue. The major contributions of this study have substantial real-world inferences for corporate establishments and decision-makers, in terms of the development of strategies for operative applications.