The next speaker in this Weizenbaum Conference session is Alexander Wilke, whose interest is in motivating users to care about their online security. Younger users – so-called ‘digital natives’ – often fall victim to cybercrime; they have low risk awareness, and lack fundamental knowledge about protecting themselves online.
Some studies show promising results from dedicated training in phishing detection, and gamified and interactive training models; but much more work needs to be done to understand effective means of delivering training and motivating users to protect themselves more actively. Protection motivation theory can help here: it shows that both the perception of the threat and the coping options available contribute to protection motivation, as do perceptions of the efficacy of security measures.
Communication measures that contain elements of coping appraisals might therefore be more effective; message format may also matter. This project tested this via experiments simulating Instagram messages in text and video formats that explored various messaging approaches, and delivered these to more than 1,000 participants.
There seemed to be no difference between messages that only identify the threat and those that also contain a coping appraisal; formats (text / video) also did not make a difference. High perceptions of elements of the coping appraisal did make a difference, however – yet only some 5% of participants showed actual behaviour, in spite of otherwise high behavioural intention.
