Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 159, December 2020, 104001
Computers & Education

The mediating and buffering effect of academic self-efficacy on the relationship between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Smartphone addiction has a direct predictive effect on students' academic procrastination.

  • Smartphone addiction negatively predicts college students' academic self-efficacy.

  • There is a negative association between academic self-efficacy and academic procrastination.

  • Academic self-efficacy plays a mediating and buffering role between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination.

Abstract

To understand the relationship between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination and the mechanisms at work within this relationship, this study constructs a mediation model to examine the impact of college students' smartphone addiction on their academic procrastination and the mediation effect of academic self-efficacy. A total of 483 college students were surveyed using the Smartphone Addiction Scale—Short Version, College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale and Tuckman Academic Procrastination Scale. Correlation analysis showed that smartphone addiction was positively related to academic procrastination while being negatively related to academic self-efficacy. At the same time, academic self-efficacy and academic procrastination were negatively related. Further, mediation analysis using the PROCESS plugin in SPSS showed that smartphone addiction has a direct predictive effect on students’ academic procrastination and an indirect predictive effect via academic self-efficacy after controlling for age, gender, and academic year. Specifically, academic self-efficacy was found to be a partial mediator and play a buffering role between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination.

Introduction

The multifunctionality of the smartphone has led to its increasing popularity and made it an indispensable part of life. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center (2015), 46% of U.S. smartphone owners believed that they could not go on living without their smartphone, and 93% of young adults (18–29 years old) said that they used smartphone at least once during learning time to avoid boredom. In addition, the percentage of adult smartphone owners exploded rapidly from 35% to 64% in the three-year period from 2011 to 2014 in the U.S. (Pew Research Center, 2015). Similarly, a Korean report in 2011 indicated that smartphone users in Korea were estimated to number over 20 million (Kwon, Lee et al., 2013), nearly half the population. By August 2019, the number of Internet users in China had reached 854 million, and 99.1% of them used their smartphone as an Internet-access device (China Internet Information Center, 2019).

The prevalence of smartphones has made modern life much more efficient and convenient. However, their excessive use has also brought many health, social, and academic challenges (Choi et al., 2015; Khoury et al., 2019; Kwon, Kim, Cho, & Yang, 2013; Lee, Cho, Kim, & Noh, 2015; Samaha & Hawi, 2016). For instance, smartphone overuse sometimes can be unhealthy or even dangerous: mobile-phone use while driving can be a factor leading to fatal car crashes (Pennay, 2006). In another study, 35.9% of 688 undergraduates reported that they felt tired in the daytime because of their smartphone use at late night, 38.1% had decreased sleep quality, and 35.8% slept for less than 4 hours due to excessive smartphone use more than once (Boumosleh & Jaalouk, 2017). Smartphone overuse has also been reported to have negative effects on academic and labour performance. A survey of 517 high-school students found that teens who used their mobile phones while doing homework had lower grades than their counterparts who did not (Pierce & Vaca, 2007). Further, a cross-cultural study (Panek, Khang, Liu, & Chae, 2018) showed that problems resulting from smartphone overuse are not culturally specific.

The popularity of the smartphone and the issues resulting from its overuse have triggered the interest of researchers all over the world. In the literature, the phenomenon of excessive smartphone use is often referred to as “problematic smartphone use,” “smartphone addiction,” “smartphone addiction proneness,” “smartphone dependence,” “mobile-phone addiction” or “mobile-phone dependence” (e.g. Al-Barashdi; Bouazza, & Jabur, 2015; Hussain, Griffiths, & Sheffield, 2017; Kim, Lee, Lee, Nam, & Chung, 2014; Park, Kim, Shon, & Shim, 2013; Wang et al., 2018). In the current study, the term “smartphone addiction” is used. This is because “smartphone” emphasizes the multifunctionality of the cell phone, a feature which makes it addictive for humans, while the term “mobile phone” does not. Also, “addiction” is more severe than “dependence” and more accurate for the purpose of the present study.

According to the existing literature, many students suffer from uncontrolled procrastination in their learning life, and problematic smartphone use has been presumed to be a reason (e.g. Rozgonjuk; Kattago, & Taht, 2018; Ryan, Reece, Chester, & Xenos, 2016). However, few studies explore the relationship between smartphone addiction and students' academic procrastination—their tendency to delay learning tasks. In addition, students’ academic self-efficacy—their feelings of competence in learning—has been frequently found related to their academic procrastination (e.g., Hen & Goroshit, 2014; Klassen; Kuzucu, 2009; Wu & Fan, 2017). Yet, few studies focus on the relationship between smartphone addiction and academic self-efficacy and the possible mediating role of academic self-efficacy between smartphone addition and academic procrastination.

To enhance understanding of the phenomenon of smartphone addiction in the academic setting, the present study explored the relationship between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination and the role of academic self-efficacy in mediating between the two. Meanwhile, three frequently reported factors that might significantly influence the academic self-efficacy and the academic procrastination—age, gender, and academic level—were considered as covariates and controlled in the process. In the following section, the definition of the three constructs, their affecting variables, and the relations between them will be presented.

Section snippets

Smartphone addiction

In the past, the scope of addiction, or impulsive control disorder, was quite narrow, limited to addiction to substances such as drugs or alcohol, but then the scope has been extended to include non-substance addictions (Griffiths, 1995; Kwon, Lee, et al., 2013; Kwon, Lee et al., 2013). One form of non-substance addiction is behavioural addiction, impulsive control disorder with a behavioural focus, such as an exercise or shopping addiction (Grant, Potenza, Weinstein, & Gorelick, 2010).

Participants

This research was conducted in a college of science in a public University in Southeast China. The college has 1500 students of six majors at bachelor level. A total of 500 students participated in the research and completed a questionnaire. Cases of incomplete response were removed from the data set, reducing the sample size to 483. The ages of students ranged from 16 to 24, with a mean age of 20.2 (SD: 1.47). Of the respondents, 211 (44%) were male and 272 (56%) were female.

To develop ideas

Descriptive and correlation analysis

The descriptive analyses results of college students’ smartphone addiction, academic self-efficacy, and academic procrastination have been summarized in Table 1.

Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relations among the three variables. Smartphone addiction was found to be positively and significantly correlated with college students’ academic procrastination behaviours (r = 0.558, p < .01). Smartphone addiction and academic self-efficacy were significantly

Discussion of the results

The findings of this investigation are in keeping with the hypotheses of the present study and with previous research. First, these results agree with H1 and also the findings of other studies, in which a predictive relation between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination does exist (e.g. Davis et al., 2002; Geng et al., 2018; Rozgonjuk et al., 2018). This finding implies that the individual tends to delay facing difficult tasks yet indulges in entertaining experiences provided by

Conclusion

This study explores the relationships between smartphone addiction and academic procrastination and the buffering role of academic self-efficacy in mitigating between the two. The results indicate that college students who were more addicted to their smartphone tended to procrastinate more in completing their academic work. Moreover, students who felt less academically competent had a stronger tendency to procrastinate than their peers who felt more competent, even though they might have the

Funding resources

None.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ling Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Haiyin Gao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Data curation, Investigation. Yanhua Xu: Methodology, Software, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

None.

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