Dissertation
Personal Values and Legitimacy Perceptions: Moving Beyond Fear in Information Security Policy Compliance
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004614
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/124976
Abstract
Cybersecurity threats and information security policy compliance are the most critical concerns for CIOs. New organizational trends made the individual characteristics of employees more relevant in fostering compliance with information security policies. While extant research theorizes and offers alternatives to induce policy compliance, few studies consider the individual’s characteristics and focus on fear as the main motivator to secure behaviors. This dissertation aims to understand if personal characteristics such as personal values and legitimacy perceptions are good alternatives in fostering compliance with policies and secure behaviors in organizations. Essay one indicates that personal values in the context of information security directly affect the intention to comply with the policy. Essay one's results indicate that personal values play an important role in compliance with security policies and, together with fear, can motivate secure behaviors. Furthermore, it extends and makes precisions to previous research relating ethics, beliefs, and attitudes towards policies with personal values. Essay two suggests the mediating effect of legitimacy perceptions over threat appraisal and some personal values. Essay two supports previous research indicating that compliance with organizational policies is stronger when employees have a perception of the policy as legitimate. Furthermore, Essay two introduces another crucial evaluative element in protection motivation, such as the legitimacy perception of the policies. In essay three, experimentally, we obtained a better understanding of the rhetorical communications that the security organization needs to use to legitimize security policies and foster compliance with them. Essay three modifies the fear appeals concept and proposes a broader legitimacy appeals approach that caters to pragmatic and moral legitimacy perceptions as the primary motivator for the adoption of secure behaviors and, to a lesser extent, to fear as a motivator to compliance. These three essays are different studies using different methods that combined offer a better understanding of the importance of personal characteristics such as legitimacy perceptions and personal values beyond the traditional fear approach in information security policy compliance.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Personal Values and Legitimacy Perceptions
- Creators
- Carlos Ivan Torres
- Contributors
- Robert E Crossler (Advisor)Richard D Johnson (Advisor)Michelle Carter (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Carson College of Business
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 237
- Identifiers
- 99900901438501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation