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As a first attempt to quantify how individuals respond to failures associated with forms of digital technology, the scale used in the current study provides a potential step in exploring the phenomena further. The scale presents a number of factors that share links to previous research exploring the responses to frustration. There is clearly a distinction between the factors in the present scale, with most of the items loading directly onto maladaptive, emotive response to frustration. These items cover a variety of maladaptive, objective responses originally identified by, as well as some items that related directly to intropunitive responses (e.g. ‘I feel that it is my fault’). It appears that, in the context of the current scale, the distinction between maladaptive objective and subjective responses to frustration are not as clear-cut as the distinction made by. A second factor included items that clearly capture the element of an adaptive response. In the original framework, adaptive responses are seen as the potential to transform the ‘energy’ resulting from the frustrating response into a more productive mechanism that aids goal attainment or circumvention of the frustration-eliciting event (). These aspects are adequately captured in the items that load onto this factor, including a search for a potential solution online, or relishing the chance to engage in problem solving to resolve the issue. The third factor appears to be typified by attempt to vent frustrations to an external agent, either directly to the company or via social media. Two additional items detail the use of social media to help find a potential solution to the problem, or an attempt to overcome the issue by paying someone to help. Research has previously shown that consumers will often turn to social media in an attempt to both vent their frustrations, particularly when they feel like they have been ignored by an organisation (). Such responses can have a particularly damaging impact on brand reputation, especially where the reply to such public venting are not carefully managed (). The final factor appears to be a mix of anger and annoyance, but also an aspect of resignation that the issue might not get solved, hence it is better to go and do something else. The anger response to frustrations with digital technology is something that has been previously explored, with researchers noting that some individual adopt a perception that computers have human like characteristics (). This phenomenon has been termed ethopoeia, and research has noted that anger intensity related to frustrating experiences can be influenced by the extent to which an individual believes the computer is responsible for such ().