Device Features and/or Personality Traits? Disentangling the Determinants of Smartphone Nomophobia and Pathology among Urban Millennials
Abstract
Smartphones have emerged as a mobile device that provides users with "smart" functionalities, aesthetics features and capabilities. These smart devices are the “must have” advanced communication tools and have been assimilated as an integral part of the everyday life. Although academic scholars and practitioners have started to venture into a research stream that focuses on behavioral models to elucidate and predict smartphone consumption trends and behavior, however, there is limited empirical research that attempts to unleash factors that triggered smartphone users to become nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia) and consecutively in turn become pathology (also known as addiction or dependency) user. Henceforth, this work seeks to explore both emerging phenomena by developing and validating a research model which is based on the Media Dependency Theory. The structural equation modelling analysis was conducted using Smart Partial Least Square (SmartPLS3) procedure with a dataset of 272 smartphone users who belong to the urban Millennials generational cohort. Two main predictors are hypothesized, which are the smartphone features (software and hardware) and users’ personality traits (openness, neuroticism, and extraversion). The results suggest that multiple facets of smartphone users’ personalities, particularly neuroticism significantly cause the smartphone users to become nomophobia and subsequently pathological. Whereas, the device hardware features have a positive significance effect on nomophobia, nevertheless not trigger pathology. Surprisingly, software features of the smartphone do not offer evidence of their effect on nomophobia as well as pathology. The key findings uncovered from this exploratory research provide rich insights for theoretical and practical implications.
Downloads
References
Augner & Hacker. (2012). Associations between problematic mobile phone use and psychological parameters in young adults. International Journal of Public Health, 57, 437-441.
Coenen, M. & Gorlich, Y. (2022). Exploring nomophobia with a German adaption of the nomophobia questionnaire (NMP-Q-D). PLoS ONE. 17(12).
Dalbudak, I., Yilmaz, T. & Yigit, S. (2020). Nomophobia levels and personalities of university students. Journal of Education and Learning, 9(2), 166.
Economic Planning Unit Malaysia. (2022). Syndicated Report. Retrieved on 25th July 2022 from http://www.epu.gov.my/documents/
Eichenberg, C., Schott, M. & Schroiff, A. (2021). Problematic smartphone use—comparison of students with and without problematic smartphone use in light of personality. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11.
Fornell, C. G. & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39-50.
Gaurav, K., Manu, K. & Poonam, J.. (2021). Nomophobia: An assessment of no phone phobia among adolescents. Medico Legal Update, 21(1), 269–274.
Hair, J. F., Black, W., Babin, B. & Anderson, R. (2010). Multivariate data analysis, 7/e, Pearson Prentice Hall.
Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T. M., Ringle, C. M. & Sarstedt, M. (2022). A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). 3rd Ed., Sage: Thousand Oaks.
Hair, J. F., Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M. & Mena, J. A. (2011). An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling in marketing research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40 (3), 414-433.
Hamburger, Y. A. & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). The relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 16, 441-449.
Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M. & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 115-135.
Hill, W. W. & Beatty, S. E. (2011). A model of adolescents’ online consumer self-efficacy (OCSE). Journal of Business Research, 64(10), 1025-1033.
Jahrami, H. (2023). The relationship between nomophobia, insomnia, chronotype, phone in proximity, screen time, and sleep duration in adults: A mobile phone app-assisted cross-sectional study. Healthcare. 11(10), 1503-1512.
Kheradmand, A., Amirlatifi, E. & Rahbar, Z. (2023). Personality traits of university students with smartphone addiction. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14.
Marengo, D., Sindermann, C., Hackel, D., Settanni, M., Elhai, J. & Montag, C. (2020). The association between the big five personality traits and smartphone use disorder: A meta-analysis. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 9(3), 534-550.
Mohtasham-Amiri, Z. & Taghinejad, N. (2022). Prediction of nomophobia based on self-esteem, five personality factors and age in undergraduate students. Iranian Evolutionary Educational Psychology Journal, 4(1), 136-145.
Molu, N., Icel, S. & Aydogan, A. (2023). Relationship between nomophobia levels and personality traits of nursing students: A multicenter study. Modern Care Journal, 20(3).
Nielsens Mobile Insights Malaysia. (2020). Syndicated Report. Retrieved on 25th July 2020 from http://www.nielsen.com/my.html.
Rahim, N., Siah, Y., Tee, X. & Siah, P. (2020). Smartphone addiction: Its relationships to personality traits and types of smartphone use. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science, 5(1), 128-140.
Roberts, J. A. (2016). The Talking Dead: How personality drives smartphone addiction. The Conversation. Retrieved on 6th August 2021 from https://theconversation.com/the-talking-dead-how-personality-drives-smartphone-addiction-62411.
Roberts, J. A., Pullig, C. & Manolis, C. (2015). I need my smartphone: A hierarchical model of personality and cellphone addiction. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, 79 (1), 13-19.
Roberts, J. A., Yaya, L. H. P. & Manolis, C. (2014). The invisible addiction: Among male and female college students. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 79, 13-19.
Rodriguez-¬Garcia, A., Moreno-Guerrero, A. & Belmonte, J. L. (2020). Nomophobia: An individual’s growing fear of being without a smartphone—a systematic literature review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(2), 580
?ahin, Y., Sarsar, F., Sapmaz, F. & Hamutoglu, N. (2022). The examination of self-regulation abilities in high school students within the framework of an integrated model of personality traits, cyberloafing and nomophobia. Cukurova University Faculty of Education Journal, 51(1), 501-537.
Copyright (c) 2023 Janiffa Saidon, Rosidah Musa, Hairulnizam Hashim, Nurul Ainun Ahmad Atory, Faizah Md Sohid, Nuryusmawati Mohd Yusof, Syed Ashrene Syed Omar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author (s) should affirm that the material has not been published previously. It has not been submitted and it is not under consideration by any other journal. At the same time author (s) need to execute a publication permission agreement to assume the responsibility of the submitted content and any omissions and errors therein. After submission of revised paper in the light of suggestions of the reviewers, the editorial team edits and formats manuscripts to bring uniformity and standardization in published material.
This work will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and under condition of the license, users are free to read, copy, remix, transform, redistribute, download, print, search or link to the full texts of articles and even build upon their work as long as they credit the author for the original work. Moreover, as per journal policy author (s) hold and retain copyrights without any restrictions.