Processing Information Security Messages: An Elaboration Likelihood Perspective

The increasing number of security incidents is causing great concern to organizations. Information security awareness programs are an important approach towards educating users to prevent such incidents. However, it is unclear how to effectively design security programs and messages such that they can inform and change user behaviour. The role of individual factors in influencing the processing of security messages is also unclear. This paper attempts to investigate these problems by studying the effects of security message characteristics and recipient factors on users’ attitude towards security, using the information-processing theory of elaboration likelihood. Two models are developed for this study. The first model studies two message characteristics, argument quantity and quality, as determinants of attitude towards security. A 2x2 factorial design experiment will be conducted to investigate the influence of these characteristics on attitude moderated by the elaboration likelihood towards the security message. The second model tests the effect of four recipient factors on elaboration likelihood. The model development, experimental methodology, and data analysis details are described in this research-in-progress paper. The results are expected to inform the design of effective security messages and contribute to research in this area.