Failure to decrease the addictive use of information systems: An empirical investigation of smartphone game addiction

Anecdotal evidences indicate that information technology addiction has become prevalent over the globe, and can result in serious negative consequences. Despite the rising concerns over this issue, its theoretical understanding is still lacking in the mainstream information system literature. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory, this study attempts to reveal why users cannot decrease their addictive behavior of playing smartphone games. The social cognitive theory serves as a framework for interpreting the failure of decreased behavior with three-stage process: self-observation, self-judgment, and self-reaction. We build our research model by following this perspective and propose key drivers in each process to explicate why the decrease of addictive behavior fails. We plan to validate our model using a longitudinal survey design. We expect that this study can improve our limited understanding of information technology addiction. Possible implications for both theory and practice are discussed.