When I Receive Too Much Social Support: The Effect of Social Support Overload on Users' Life Burnout and Discontinuance in Fitness Apps.

Background/objectives: As fitness apps increasingly incorporate social interaction features, users may find themselves overwhelmed by an excess of received support, struggling to effectively manage it. Highlighting a novel recipient-centric perspective, we aim to investigate the impact of social support overload on users' life burnout and discontinuance within fitness apps.

Methods: Utilizing Social Support Theory and Basic Psychological Needs Theory, we develop a model to examine how emotional, network, and informational support overload affect life burnout and discontinuance through the frustration of basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. A total of 443 fitness app users were included in our study, and we employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to empirically test this model.

Results: The results highlight the significant mediating role of the frustration of basic psychological needs between social support overload and life burnout/discontinuance. Network and informational support overload positively correlate with frustration of all needs, whereas emotional support overload shows a complex relationship. All need frustrations are linked to life burnout, but only autonomy and relatedness frustrations significantly lead to discontinuance. Additionally, gender and app use proficiency are significant control variables impacting discontinuance.

Conclusions: This study adopts a novel recipient-centric perspective to explore social support overload, examining its effects on life burnout and discontinuance and offering practical implications for both users and app managers.