The relationship between the online social anxiety, perceived information overload and fatigue, and job engagement of civil servant LINE users

In today's organizations, employees have an ever-growing variety of Instant Messaging (IM) technology to use to assist with the performance of their work activities. The use of an instant messenger (LINE) is popular in the government sector where immediate responses due to public pressure are expected; however, very little is known about the role of LINE in civil servants' work and its impact on their experiences. To address this gap, based on the media richness theory, this study aims to explore workers' online social anxiety, LINE cognitive fatigue (LCF) and perceived information overload of IM (PIOIM) affecting their job engagement. The data used in this study were collected from 429 civil servants in Taiwan via an online survey and were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that online social anxiety is positively related to LCF and PIOIM. Respondents with higher LCF and PIOIM are less likely to be involved in job activities. Online social anxiety is negatively related to job engagement mediated by LCF and PIOIM. Considering the flexibility of using IM in communicating public affairs between civil servants, the flood of messages has to be reduced in order to increase job engagement.