Person-Environment Fit Perspective on Stress

The Person-Environment Fit perspective (P-E Fit; Pervin, 1968; French et al., 1982) generally suggests that all aspects of behavior and performance result from the perceived transaction or interaction between an individual and such environments as the workplace. The perspective is concerned with subjective evaluations of fit between a person and her workplace in terms of abilities and skills. Whereas an improved perceived fit is associated with less strain and higher performance, a perceived misfit results in poor performance and stress for the employee. The extent of fit or misfit is determined by a

“relative balance of forces” between such environmental demands as workload and an individual’s resources (e.g., time or such mental resources as thinking, calculating,

remembering, and deciding) available for responding to these demands (Lazarus, 1999, p.

58). This weighing scale is analogous to a seesaw, with the environmental resource demand (i.e., an external force or stressor, such as workload) on one side of the seesaw and available resources on the other side (see Figure 2.3). As the environmental demand for such resources as time or thinking exceeds the available resources, implying a perceived mismatch between resource demand and supply as in the case of excessive workload, stress results (Lazarus, 1999) and performance declines (Pervin, 1968).

44

Figure 2.3 A high-stress balance (Lazarus, 1999)

Two early studies by French and colleagues were influential in supporting the P-E Fit perspective (Caplan & Harrison, 1993). French et al. (1974) presented a quantitative approach to conceptualizing the relationships among certain mental health factors. In the process, they developed measures of P-E Fit along ten dimensions, such as intelligence, which were thought to be important to the sample of 2,000 male high school attendants.

Using correlation analysis, the authors found that perceived P-E Fit is significantly related to such negative affective states as anxiety, as well as to the respondents’

likelihood of dropping out of school.

Another study by French and his colleagues (French et al., 1982) examined the effects of stressors in the task environment, and such perceptions of P-E misfit as high workload, on psychological and physiological stress. The authors administered a large-scale survey to 2010 men working in 23 different occupations. Using multiple regression

45

analysis, they found strong support for P-E Fit theory, indicating that environmental stressors affect stress indirectly through their effects on perceptions of P-E Fit.

The P-E Fit perspective has also been applied to IS phenomena. A search across more than 40 databases including Business Source Premier revealed one published study.

Chilton et al. (2005) used the P-E Fit perspective to examine cognitive style as a potential determinant of job stress and productivity impediments in software developers. Applying multiple regression analysis to survey data from 123 software developers, Chilton et al.

found that stress increases and performance decreases as the fit between the preferred cognitive style of a software developer and the developer’s perception of the style required by the task diminishes.

Additionally, a study by Ayyagari et al. (forthcoming), used the P-E Fit

perspective to examine technological antecedents to and implications of technostress. The authors predicted that such technology characteristics as usability, intrusiveness, and dynamism would affect stress indirectly through their impact on P-E Fit, for example, in the form of work overload. Using field data from 661 working professionals, they found most of their hypotheses supported. In particular, they found that intrusive technology characteristics are the dominant predictors of P-E Fit in the context of technostress. The authors concluded that their study provides important evidence for the mediating role of P-E Fit in the relationship between technology and individual stress, and they suggest that future research may utilize the P-E Fit perspective to explore the stressful effects of such specific forms of technology as T-M interruptions.

46

While most theories based on the P-E fit perspective suggest that excess resource demands give rise to stress (see McGrath, 1976, for an exception), they are inconclusive on the role of excess resource supplies (Edwards, 1996). Some suggest that excess supplies create boredom and fatigue and thereby lead to stress (Beehr, 1995), whereas others indicate that excess supplies have no relationship with stress (Edwards, 1996).

Figure 2.4 presents the P-E fit perspective adapted from Warburton (1979).

Consistent with ICT-based tasks, which place particularly high mental demands on individuals (Birdi & Zapf, 1997; Czaja & Sharit, 1993), the perspective views person-environment fit as a function of mental load (i.e., the ratio of cognitive resource supply to resource demand). This mental load (or cognitive load) arises from task demands, which are conceptualized in terms of environmental demands per unit time (Warburton, 1979).

In other words, a person’s mental load is determined by the frequency with which

environmental demands occur. For example, as demands such as T-M interruptions occur more frequently, a person has to decide more frequently about whether to attend to an interruption and has to think more frequently about the content of an interruption, thereby incurring greater mental load within a given time period. This mental load, in turn,

impacts stress. Consistent with much research in the area of organizational stress (e.g., Baynes et al., 1978; Beehr, 1995), the perspective further suggests that stress results in reduced task performance (Blau, 1981). A recent meta-analysis (Chang et al., 2009) verified that psychological strain intervenes between stressors and task performance.

47

Figure 2.4 The Person-Environment fit perspective (Warburton, 1979)

The essence of P-E Fit is captured by perceptions of mental workload

(Kaldenberg & Becker, 1992), a construct, which reflects the perceived relative balance between the mental resources required to perform the current task and the mental resources available (Hart & Staveland, 1988; Wickens et al., 2004). As such, perceived mental workload increases in correspondence with cognitive demands (Strayer & Drews, 2007; Yeh & Wickens, 1988). Research generally reports that work overload is

associated with stress (Kaldenberg & Becker, 1992). In fact, a high level of perceived mental workload is a stressor of “particular importance” (Endsley, 1995, p. 53; Hart &

Staveland, 1988) since it is directly associated with the threat of low performance.

Since the PE-fit perspective is a relational approach that considers the person and focuses on perceptions of fit, it gives “full recognition to individual differences” (Blau, 1981, p. 280; Lazarus, 1999). This is especially true since the perspective focuses on cognitive resources, which constitute a central avenue for explaining individual

differences in stress responses (Warburton, 1979). Accordingly, the perspective allows for addressing differences in stress responses on the basis of cognitive aging, which refers to age-related changes in the availability of cognitive resources (Park, 2000).

In line with its suitability for addressing individual differences and relatedness to Lazarus (1966; 1999), the perspective also acknowledges the importance of coping (i.e.,

Task Demands Mental Load Stress Performance

48

dealing with stressful events) (Harrison, 1985). Coping can be integrated into the model as a moderator of the P-E Fit–Stress link (Lazarus, 1999). In other words, coping can weaken effects of such stressors as perceived mental workload on stress. However, the question remains of what theoretical perspective should be used to examine the role of age in a theory of technostress.