Pain Sensitivity and Digital Hoarding as an Avoidance Behavior on Social Media: A Moderated Mediation Model Involving Fear of Pain and Dispositional Greed

In the past decade, both the public health significance of pain and research interest in digital hoarding behavior have increased. The current research investigates whether these two increasingly studied phenomena are connected and, if so, their associated psychological processes and boundary conditions, with a specific focus on the context of social media as a form of popular media. We conducted a cross-sectional survey study with 1054 social media users. The results indicated that pain sensitivity is associated with digital hoarding behavior and that fear of pain mediates this association. Moreover, dispositional greed moderates the association between pain sensitivity and digital hoarding behavior such that this association is stronger for social media users with high dispositional greed. Dispositional greed also moderates the association between fear of pain and digital hoarding behavior such that the association is stronger for social media users with low dispositional greed. The psychological processes and differential moderating role of dispositional greed deepen the understanding of the associations between pain sensitivity and digital hoarding behavior within the realm of popular media use.