Digital Distress and Digital Eustress as Predictors of Academic Engagement and Academic Burnout: The Moderating Role of Psychological Capital among University Students

Abstract

The present study focused on the relationships between digital distress, digital eustress, academic engagement, academic burnout, and moderating role of Psychological Capital among university students in Pakistan. In this study the Anila Psychological Capital Scale was translated from Urdu into English and shortened version of the scale was developed then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to investigate the psychometrics properties of the shortened scale. Apart from that the digital Eustress scale was adapted from work related context to an academic related context for use with university students. The research design adopted was a cross-sectional correlational research design with the data collection instruments used being the Digital Stress Scale (DSS) (Steele et al., 2020), Techno-Eustress Scale (TES) (Nascimento et al., 2020), Anila Psychological Capital Scale Short Version (APC-SV) Utrecht Work Engagement Scale–Student Version (UWES-S) (Schaufeli et al., 2002) and Maslach Burnout Inventory–Student Survey (MBI-SS) (Maslach et al., 2001). The results indicated that digital distress and digital eustress greatly predicted academic engagement and academic burnout. The psychological capital fully moderated the link between digital distress and academic engagement and link between digital eustress and academic burnout. However, no significant moderation was observed between digital eustress and academic engagement or between digital distress and academic burnout. The findings in this study are in line with the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2001), which suggests that the role of technology-related experiences in students may be either as psychological demands or motivational resources, depending on the students' personal resources.