Dual-factored technostress: the relation between technological distress and eustress

Abstract Recently researchers have examined the issue of techno-eustress and shown that technostressors have beneficial outcomes. These outcomes arise from the positive psychological responses occurring in techno-eustress, and they come in addition to the adverse outcomes that arise from the negative psychological responses occurring in techno-distress. While this is an important discovery, it implicitly assumes that eustress and distress responses represent separate constructs rather than the opposite ends of a single continuum. Based on a systematic literature review, we conclude that this key assumption is yet to be systematically examined. Hence, the present paper theorizes the relation between these two types of responses and develops a two-dimensional model that identifies four prototypical technostress conditions. According to this model, technostress is dual-factored because (1) different combinations of low and high levels of distress and eustress responses can co-exist, (2) distress and eustress responses do not correlate strongly, and (3) distress and eustress responses have different predictive abilities. Data were collected from two online questionnaires administered in the U.S. using the Qualtrics panel. The data supported the model and also demonstrated valence specificity. The distress response explains more variance in adverse work outcomes such as attrition, but the eustress response explains more variance in beneficial work outcomes such as job satisfaction and in beneficial personal outcomes such as partnership satisfaction. The data also revealed that the eustress response can explain additional variance in related outcomes over and above the variance explained by the distress response. This shows that techno-eustress is a critical complement to techno-distress, and it presents research opportunities with important strategic implications. Future research directions and limitations are also acknowledged.