Investigating AI-induced Technostress and Coping Strategies of Professionals

While the rise of AI has benefited professionals, it also induces technostress that threatens their expertise and jobs. To ensure the human-centered advancement of technology, a deep understanding of users technostress and how to cope with it is essential. Despite technostress having long been discussed, the growing integration of AI tools into professionals’ everyday work amplifies these challenges and calls for further exploration. Accordingly, this is a timely moment to examine their real-world experiences and voices. Thus, our study aims to investigate AI-induced technostress experienced by professionals, and the coping strategies they employ. Through focus group interviews with 19 professionals from diverse fields, we identified seven AI-induced technostressors and examined their coping strategies along two dimensions: stress Coping Style (problem-focused and emotion-focused) and Value Orientation (AI-oriented and humanness-oriented). Drawing on professionals’ coping strategies, we suggest practical implications to support users in coping with AI-induced technostress.