Social comparison and coping under pressure: technostress in gamified digital learning environments

Gamified digital learning environments can instigate social comparison and contribute to learners’ experiences of technostress. While prior research demonstrates how social comparison can shape individuals’ coping behaviours in stressful situations, the confluent effect of social comparison and coping with technology-induced demands as hindrance technostressors has not been empirically investigated. We postulate that gamified digital learning can trigger positive or negative social comparison, influencing learners’ coping with hindrance technostressors and their overall satisfaction. Our findings from a survey of 1,070 university learners demonstrate that, contrary to prior assumptions in the literature, negative social comparison—usually associated with negative outcomes—mitigates the negative effects of hindrance technostressors on learner satisfaction; this mitigation occurs by moderating both the indirect effect of hindrance technostressors through adaptive coping and their dFirect effect on learner satisfaction. This study is the first to theorise coping with hindrance technostressors in gamified platforms by showing the significance of social comparison in shaping the effects of these stressors both directly and indirectly through coping.