Protective factors against technostress in secondary school teachers

Reliance on innovative learning and teaching methodologies based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is continuously growing in educational institutions. However, using ICTs requires up-to-date knowledge, digital skills, and flexible adaptation to technological changes and challenges. These demands can lead teachers to experience technostress, undermining their ability to cope with emerging technologies and fully exploit their potential. This is particularly true for teachers who lack appropriate emotion regulation strategies and digital proficiency. In the present study, we investigated technostress creators among secondary school teachers, evaluating the predictive role of cognitive emotion regulation and the mediating role of self-efficacy in digital competencies. Notably, adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies were distinguished to clarify their distinct contributions to teachers’ psychological experience of technostress creators. Mediation analyses highlighted a direct effect of maladaptive strategies on the experience of technostress creators, whereas adaptive strategies exerted an indirect effect through self-efficacy in digital competencies. Maladaptive emotion regulation was positively associated with higher levels of technostress creators, whereas adaptive emotion regulation was positively associated with self-efficacy in digital competencies. Self-efficacy in digital competencies, in turn, was negatively associated with the experience of technostress creators. These findings provide evidence for implementing not only emotion regulation-based but also digital self-efficacy-based interventions to mitigate teachers’ technostress.