Purpose

Drawing on the stress and coping theory, conservation of resources (COR) theory and social role theory, this study aims to investigate the impact of social media overload on knowledge withholding behavior and examine the gender differences in social media overload, engendering knowledge withholding.

Design/methodology/approach

By hiring a professional online survey company, this study collected valid responses from 325 general social media users. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, bootstrapping method and multi-group analysis were used to test the proposed theoretical model.

Findings

The empirical results reveal that three types of social media overload positively affect users' knowledge withholding behavior and that emotional exhaustion significantly mediates the above relationships. The multi-group analysis demonstrates that gender differences do exist in the decision-making process of knowledge withholding; for example, females are more likely than males to become emotionally exhausted from social media overload, while males are more likely than females to engage in knowledge withholding behavior in the case of emotional exhaustion.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by examining the relationship between social media overload and knowledge withholding, verifying the mediating role of emotional exhaustion as the key mechanism linking them, and narrowing the research gap of lacking gender differences research in knowledge withholding literature.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体超载、性别差异和知识隐瞒

目的

借鉴压力和应对理论、资源保护 (COR) 理论和社会角色理论，本研究旨在调查社交媒体超载对知识隐瞒行为的影响，并检验社交媒体超载、导致知识隐瞒的性别差异。

设计/方法/途径

通过聘请专业的在线调查公司，本研究收集了 325 名普通社交媒体用户的有效回复。结构方程模型(SEM) 技术、 引导方法和多组分析被用来测试所提出的理论模型。

发现

实证结果表明，三种类型的社交媒体超载对用户的知识隐瞒行为有积极影响，情绪耗竭显着调节上述关系。多群体分析表明，知识隐瞒决策过程中确实存在性别差异；例如，女性比男性更有可能因社交媒体超负荷而变得情绪疲惫，而男性比女性更有可能在情绪疲惫的情况下进行知识隐瞒行为。

原创性/价值

本研究通过检验社交媒体超载与知识隐瞒之间的关系，验证情绪耗竭的中介作用作为连接它们的关键机制，并缩小知识隐瞒文献中缺乏性别差异研究的研究空白，从而为现有知识体系做出贡献。