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. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000948

Commentary

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven many people to work remotely, and virtual meetings have been actively

This rapid increase has been described as exhaustion and zoom fatigue after a day of virtual meetings. This study was investigating how one prominent feature of virtual meetings, the camera, affects the outcome during the meeting and how it affects fatigue.

A four-week in-person experience sampling field experiment was used to manipulate the use of the camera. Drawing from theories related to self-representation, they proposed and tested a model in which the research condition (camera on and off) was related to daily malaise. Daily malaise was estimated to be negatively related to voice and engagement during virtual meetings, and gender and organizational tenure moderated this relationship, predicting that using the camera during virtual meetings would be more fatiguing for women and newer members of the organization.

The results of 1,408 daily observations from 103 employees supported the proposed model, with supplemental analysis suggesting that fatigue affects performance in same-day and next-day meetings.

As remote work is expected to become more prevalent in the future, the findings provide important insights into best practices for organizations.