Who is to blame? How too much information threatens users' IS continuance - an experimental analysis

The rapid innovation and spread of smart phones as well as their mobile applications offer people many benefits in their everyday life. The dark side, however, is that users are constantly facing more and more information, which may result in information overload. In this paper, we argue that infor- mation overload can affect users’ continuance intention of mobile applications use. The context of smart phones and mobile applications needs a special consideration because of the smaller display- size and the touch-based user interface. In addition, we contend that these effects differ according tousers’ attribution of the blame (themselves or mobile application) for the information overload. Toexplore this effect, we build on and contextualize Bhattacherjee’s information system continuancemodel and extend it with the construct information overload. We test the model by using a scenario- based study with 120 participants that enables us to manipulate information overload as well as the locus of the attribution of blame in an isolated way. The results show that satisfaction and perceived usefulness fully mediate the negative effect from information overload on continuance intention of mo- bile applications. Furthermore, internal attributions of blame are associated with a higher continu- ance intention than external attributions.