The buffering effect of flow experience on the relationship between overload and social media users’ discontinuance intentions

•A theoretical model integrating the S-O-R framework and flow theory is developed.•Social media overload affects fatigue and subsequent discontinuance intentions.•Flow experience mitigates the effect of fatigue on discontinuance intentions.•This study extends post-adoption research in the social media context. There is a growing need to understand why users discontinue using social media platforms. Understanding the antecedents of such decisions and the moderators that govern the antecedent effects can help users reach such decisions, and assist service providers in mitigating them. From a theoretical standpoint, there is a need to enrich the theoretical account of social media discontinuance phenomena. To address these issues, we integrate the “stimulus-organism-response” (S-O-R) framework and flow theory. We consequently portray the direct, indirect and moderating roles of flow experience in mitigating discontinuance intentions. We test this model via a survey of 502 WeChat users. The results support the S-O-R model and indicate that social overload, information overload, and communication overload (stimuli) increase the fatigue feelings (organism) of social media users, which, in turn, increase their social media discontinuance intentions (response). By combining the S-O-R perspective with flow theory, we show that flow experience not only help reduce users’ perceptions of fatigue and discontinuance intentions, but also moderate (weaken) the effects of fatigue on discontinuance intentions. Flow experience, therefore, serves as a means to inhibit the formation of social media discontinuance intentions, even when overload and fatigue persist. The present research also has several valuable theoretical and practical implications.