The Impact of Organizational Commitment on Insiders’ Motivation to Protect Organizational Information Assets

TLDR

Insider actions to protect organizational information security are poorly understood, and existing research relies on limited portions of protection motivation theory and isolated behaviors, restricting generalizability. The study investigates motivations for a broad set of protective behaviors by evaluating maladaptive rewards, response costs, fear, and traditional PMT components. The authors evaluate maladaptive rewards, response costs, fear, and PMT components to understand motivations for a comprehensive set of protective behaviors. Results show that security education, training, and awareness shape appraisals, PMT applies to organizational contexts only when insiders have high organizational commitment, and response costs link appraisals, with organizational commitment mediating threat relevance and SETA influencing many PMT components.

Abstract

Insiders may act to sustain and improve organizational information security, yet our knowledge of what motivates them to do so remains limited. For example, most extant research relies on mere portions of protection motivation theory (PMT) and has focused on isolated behaviors, thus limiting the generalizability of findings to isolated issues, rather than addressing the global set of protective security behaviors. Here, we investigate the motivations surrounding this larger behavioral set by assessing maladaptive rewards, response costs, and fear alongside traditional PMT components. We extend PMT by showing that: (1) security education, training, and awareness (SETA) efforts help form appraisals; (2) PMT’s applicability to organizational rather than personal contexts depends on insiders’ organizational commitment levels; and (3) response costs provide the link between PMT’s appraisals. We show in detail how organizational commitment is the mechanism through which organizational security threats become personally relevant to insiders and how SETA efforts influence many PMT-based components.