In today’s digital workplace, employees’ personal use of the internet during work hours (cyberloafing) has become extremely hard to detect and manage, demanding that organizations handle the issue with greater care and understanding rather than strict monitoring alone. The present research explores how role conflict, work stress, and role ambiguity interact to drive cyberloafing among employees of a university in Papua, Indonesia. Drawing on general strain theory, the study adopted a cross-sectional approach and gathered questionnaire data from 280 staff members chosen through proportional random sampling. Key findings show that: Role conflict significantly increases both work-related stress and cyberloafing. Work stress has a strong positive impact on cyberloafing. Role ambiguity significantly intensifies the direct link between role conflict and cyberloafing. However, role ambiguity does NOT meaningfully amplify the relationship between work stress and cyberloafing. Practically, the results emphasize that role conflict is a major contributor to employee stress and online distraction at work, yet work stress itself is an even more powerful immediate trigger of cyberloafing. The study also clarifies that unclear job expectations (role ambiguity) worsen cyberloafing mainly when employees already face conflicting demands, but do not make stressed employees loaf more than they already do. To reduce cyberloafing, organizations—especially in academic settings—should prioritize crystal-clear job descriptions, consistent policies, and open communication channels to lower role ambiguity and conflicting expectations, rather than relying solely on surveillance or punishment.
