Slacking and the Internet in the Classroom: A Preliminary Investigation

This paper investigates “slacking with Internet technologies” in a classroom environment. Rooted in the literature on social loafing, we develop a model linking attributes of the context, the individual, and technology to “intention to cyber-slack” and its influence on the effective use of Internet technology. Using data collected from 128 student respondents, we empirically test our model using the Partial Least Squares approach to structural equation modeling. Our analysis found support for many of the relationships in the theoretical model. Specifically, we found that personal innovativeness with IT and multi-tasking with internet applications contribute to cognitive absorption, while cognitive absorption and subjective norms contributed to the intention to cyberslack. Further, we found that intention to cyber-slack accounted for a large amount of the variance in effective use of Internet technologies. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for research and practice.