Motivating user security behavior: A protection motivation perspective

• Main Authors: Hui-Yu Chiang, 江蕙羽
• Other Authors: Sheng-Pao Shih
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/20463693920791300286

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 資訊管理學系碩士班 === 101 === With the rapid development of information technology, information security issues are more and more important. Currently, behavioral information security research primary focuses on the behaviors of employees in organization. Unlike employees in the work environment, general computer users have no organized security trainings or information security policies to follow, thus the protection of general users’ computers is based on the security behaviors of the users. According to the literature, when discussing the issues that users faced with fear or danger, the protection motivation theory is one of the most powerful theories describing individual intentions to take protective actions to protect themselves from threats. Protection motivation theory predicts personal protective behavior through threat appraisal and coping appraisal influenced by personal factors and environmental factors. However, most previous protection motivation security studies discussed information security behavioral intention from the threat appraisal and coping appraisal, but neglected the effects of environmental factors and personal factors on cognitive process. Therefore, this study considers the whole picture of protection motivation theory to include the social influence of environmental factors as well as previous security experience and information security awareness of personal factors then explores these impacts on threat appraisal and coping appraisal. We also discuss the impacts of threat appraisal and coping appraisal on information security behavioral intentions. Through the survey of online web questionnaires, we found that social influence significantly impacted threat appraisal, information security awareness significantly impacted coping appraisal, and previous security experience significantly impacted threat appraisal and coping appraisal. The perceived severity, self-efficacy and response efficacy had positive effects on information security behavioral intention, and response cost negatively impacted information security behavioral intention. The perceived vulnerability of threat appraisal had no significant impact on information security behavioral intention. This study suggests that the level of threat appraisal and coping appraisal can be raised by increasing user''s previous security experience, information security awareness and social influence, and thereby increase the information security behavior intention.