How E-Mail Threads Contribute to E-Mail Overload: Investigating Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane Cognitive Load

摘要

Information overload caused by e-mails is a known issue in practice and academia. Research often investigates the number of e-mails and not the cognitive impact of the e-mail channel. Therefore, it is necessary to know how much the format of a single e-mail contributes to the overall phenomenon. As an example, we examine one of the most promising formats: E-mail threads as a history of appended e-mail quotes that are forwarded to a third person. Cognitive load theory is proposed to investigate the extent to which the format of e-mail threads contributes to intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The resulting hypotheses and measurement scales help to understand the induction of e-mail overload by e-mail threads through different types of cognitive load. The scales are tested for construct validity based on an item-sort task. The results show high values for the substantive validities of the constructs, indicating good construct validity.