Sparking Employee's Creativity in Digital Work: A New Look on The Role of Perceived Usefulness

Psychol Rep. 2025 Jan 15:332941251314734. doi: 10.1177/00332941251314734. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Telecommuting platform is an important medium for collaboration in the digital era and empowering employees to work from anywhere. However, existing research has paid less attention to how employees' perception of telecommuting platform affects their behavior during working from home, especially the impact on their digital creativity. Drawing on self-determination theory, a dual path moderated mediation model was proposed to investigate the effect of perceived usefulness on employees' digital creativity. Based on survey data from 881 employees, we found that perceived usefulness has a significant positive impact on employees' digital creativity; work autonomy and telecommuting efficacy play a mediating role in the relationship between perceived usefulness and employees' digital creativity; psychological individualism positively moderates the relationship between perceived usefulness and employees' digital creativity through work autonomy. However, psychological individualism does not show a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived usefulness and employees' digital creativity through telecommuting efficacy.

Keywords: Perceived usefulness; digital creativity; psychological individualism; telecommuting efficacy; work autonomy.