Approaching IT Security & Avoiding Threats in the Smart Home Context

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Nehme, Alaa; George, Joey F. F.
• 署名单位: Mississippi State University; Iowa State University; Mississippi State University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0742-1222
• DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2022.2127449
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1184-1214
• 关键词: protection motivation theory; fear appeals; Information Security; psychological ownership; FIT INDEXES; avoidance; behaviors; emotions; hope; POSSESSIONS

摘要

Not securing smart home devices has proven a threat to cyberspace. This has underscored the importance of using fear appeals to promote users' information security behavior. We practiced context-specific theorization to enhance fear appeal theory and design. Particularly, we extended Protection Motivation Theory to include avoidant-focused motivation (i.e., users' intent to avoid using their devices), the positive emotion of hope, and information technology (IT)-self extension. Our hypotheses include that fear engenders both protection and avoidant-focused motivations, hope mediates coping appraisal to engender (reduce) protection (avoidant-focused) motivation, and IT-self-extension acts as an antecedent. We conducted four studies, including two surveys and two experiments, and validated our extensions. Our main theoretical contributions include showing that hope is critical in determining which coping mechanism occurs and that it improves the theory's predictive power. In terms of practice, we demonstrate that a fear appeal message with a self-extension component and a strong coping component is more effective.