Fatigue effects of camera use in virtual meetings: An in-person field experiment.

Shockley, KM, Gabriel, AS, Robertson, D., Rosen, CC, Chawla, N., Ganster, ML, and Ezerins, ME (2021). Fatigue effects of camera use in virtual meetings: a within-person field experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(8), 1137-1155. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000948

Commentary

The pandemic of COVID-19 has driven many people to work remotely, and face-to-face meetings have been replaced by virtual meetings.

The rapid increase in virtual meetings has led to much popular press discussion of virtual meeting fatigue (i.e., "zoom fatigue").

The purpose of this study was to understand how one prominent feature of virtual meetings, the camera, affects the outcome during a meeting and how it affects fatigue.

This was done using a four-week in-person experience sampling field experiment of camera use.

Drawing from theories related to self-representation, the study conditions proposed and tested a model that is related to daily malaise.

Daily malaise was estimated to be negatively related to voice and engagement during virtual meetings.

We further predict that this relationship is moderated by gender and organizational tenure, and that using a camera during virtual meetings will be more fatiguing for women and newer members of the organization.

The study analyzed 1,408 observations from 103 employees, and supplemental analysis suggests that fatigue affects performance in same-day and next-day meetings.

Given that the results indicate that remote work is expected to become more prevalent even after the pandemic is over, our study provides important insights into ongoing organizational best practices surrounding virtual meetings.