LAUSR

Despite the larger interest of information systems scholars in excessive ESM usage, little is known about how excessive ESM usage is related to employee performance. This study focused on excessive ESM usage and investigated its impact on employee performance. Based on the status quo perspective with the integration of social cognitive theory, this study first proposed that excessive ESM usage has a positive and negative relationship with employee performance through ESM usage regret and ESM usage inertia. Furthermore, COVID-19 threat moderates the direct relationship between excessive ESM usage and ESM usage regret, and ESM usage inertia. Time-lagged, multi-source data collected in China support most of our hypothesis. Results reveal that excessive ESM has a positive and negative indirect effect on employee performance via ESM usage regret and ESM usage inertia. Furthermore, the COVID-19 threat moderates the positive direct effect of excessive ESM usage on ESM usage inertia. In the later section, theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.