Personality traits and internet addiction among selected financial institution employees

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOES-12-2017-0220
• Date: 07 May 2019
• Published date: 07 May 2019
• Pages: 260-271
• Author: Ainin Sulaiman,Kay Yin Shin,Nina Rofaie
• Subject Matter: Economics,Social economics

Personality traits and internet

addiction among selected financial

institution employees

Ainin Sulaiman,Kay Yin Shin and Nina Rofaie

Operations and MIS, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between personality traits and

internet addiction behavior. Within the same industry background, job satisfaction was measured to test

whether there is any mediating effect toward the relationship between personality traits and internet

behavior.

Design/methodology/approach –A sample of 271 employees from financial institutionswas selected,

and IBM SPSS was used to perform descriptive statistic,correlation analysis and partial regression analysis,

to test out threemain hypotheses developed in this study.

Findings –The results indicate that personality traits, namely, agreeablenessand emotional stability are

negatively related to internet addictionbehavior. However, job satisfaction does not mediate the influence of

personality traits toward internet addiction behavior, even though the results indicated personality traits,

namely,agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotionstability are positively related to job satisfaction.

Research limitations/implications –The main implication includesbetter understanding on internet

addiction behavior in local contextand to predict internet addiction behavior through personality traitsfor

better outcomeof awareness and prevention toward this psychological disorder.

Originality/value –The study contributes in understanding internet addiction behavior in Malaysia

occupational context, as most of thelocal researches focused in validation of measurement tools. Hence, the

finding provides an empirical evidence for organizational psychology study in recognition of internet

addictionas part of occupational hazards.

Keywords Job satisfaction, Internet addiction, Personality traits

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

The advent of internet provides efficient platform for the community to seek knowledge,

interaction and entertainment (Mansell, 2007). Along with rapid adoption of technology by

community, this emerging communication technology is deemed to foster an evolving

individualisticcommunity with intractable social problems suchas internet addiction.

As internet addiction is relativelynew topic compared with others similar psychological

disorders, such as alcoholism and gambling, this topic gained continuous attention from

researchers to extend their investigation on internet addiction component to enhance

understanding and better prevention method toward this psychological disorder. What

makes personality an interestingsubject matter of this study is to predict internet addiction

behavior, through correlation study between personality and behavior. Some evidences

showed previous studies suggested that personality traits could provide better

understanding of internet addiction behavior toward a certain group of persons (Montag

and Reuter, 2015). Less evidence exists to understand internet addiction behavior in

Malaysia occupational context,as most of the local research studies focused on invalidation

of measurement tools (Kapahi et al., 2013;Guan et al., 2015;Lai et al., 2015). This study is

IJOES

35,2

260

Received7 December 2017

Revised7 December 2017

Accepted15 December 2018

InternationalJournal of Ethics and

Systems

Vol.35 No. 2, 2019

pp. 260-271

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2514-9369

DOI 10.1108/IJOES-12-2017-0220

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