Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Task Ambiguity And Individual Differences On Personal Internet Use At Work, Hitoshi Nishina

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The present study investigates the effects of task characteristics and individual differences on personal internet use at work. Borrowing from the procrastination research, four individual differences (i.e., self-efficacy, conscientiousness, impulsiveness, and ambiguity tolerance) and one task characteristic (i.e., task ambiguity) were identified as relevant variables. For this two-part study, 49 participants were recruited. The first study consisted of an online questionnaire measuring the relevant individual differences and demographic information. The second portion included a laboratory study measuring peoples' procrastination behaviors during an online task. Procrastination was operationalized as time spent on off-task activities (i.e., task-unrelated websites/applications) and was tracked by …