TY - GEN
T1 - Effects of Fear appeals and point of reference on the persuasiveness of IT security communications
AU - Du, Honglu
AU - Xu, Heng
AU - Rosson, Mary Beth
AU - Carroll, John M.
PY - 2013/9/9
Y1 - 2013/9/9
N2 - To better understand end users' security compliance behaviors, we designed an experimental study to investigate how fear appeals and point of reference manipulations could influence end users' security behavioral intentions. The findings suggest that fear appeals and point of reference collectively influence users' perceived persuasiveness of the IT security communication messages. Specifically, higher fear messages are generally more persuasive than low fear ones when the messages are self-referenced. However, in other-referenced messages, the levels of fear appeals do not make differences. Further, our results indicate that users regard IT security issues as peripheral for them and it is suggested that personalized IT security communications might have greater potential in successfully persuading end users for security compliance.
AB - To better understand end users' security compliance behaviors, we designed an experimental study to investigate how fear appeals and point of reference manipulations could influence end users' security behavioral intentions. The findings suggest that fear appeals and point of reference collectively influence users' perceived persuasiveness of the IT security communication messages. Specifically, higher fear messages are generally more persuasive than low fear ones when the messages are self-referenced. However, in other-referenced messages, the levels of fear appeals do not make differences. Further, our results indicate that users regard IT security issues as peripheral for them and it is suggested that personalized IT security communications might have greater potential in successfully persuading end users for security compliance.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84883413983&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84883413983&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ISI.2013.6578791
DO - 10.1109/ISI.2013.6578791
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84883413983
SN - 9781467362115
T3 - IEEE ISI 2013 - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics: Big Data, Emergent Threats, and Decision-Making in Security Informatics
SP - 82
EP - 84
BT - IEEE ISI 2013 - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics
T2 - 11th IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics, IEEE ISI 2013
Y2 - 4 June 2013 through 7 June 2013
ER -