Cyber security fear appeals:unexpectedly complicated

Cyber security researchers are starting to experiment with fear appeals, with a wide variety of designs and reported efficaciousness. This makes it hard to derive recommendations for designing and deploying these interventions. We thus reviewed the wider fear appeal literature to arrive at a set of guidelines to assist cyber security researchers. Our review revealed a degree of dissent about whether or not fear appeals are indeed helpful and advisable. Our review also revealed a wide range of fear appeal experimental designs, in both cyber and other domains, which confirms the need for some standardized guidelines to inform practice in this respect. We propose a protocol for carrying out fear appeal experiments, and we review a sample of cyber security fear appeal studies, via this lens, to provide a snapshot of the current state of play. We hope the proposed experimental protocol will prove helpful to those who wish to engage in future cyber security fear appeal research

Integrating Construal-level Theory in Designing Fear Appeals in IS Security Research

Organizations increasingly use fear appeals to motivate users to engage in behaviors that protect information security. Though academic interest in the topic has burgeoned, prior research has mainly focused on providing process evidence on how low- and high-threat security messages influence protective behaviors. According to protection motivation theory, however, the threat-appraisal phase, in which the receiver evaluates whether a fear appeal is threatening or not, follows exposure to the fear appeal. One can indeed design fear appeals to manipulate different dimensions, including the threat depicted and the coping response provided. These dimensions, in turn, influence protection motivation. The general focus on low- and high-threat messages runs the risks of 1) foregoing key theoretical insights that can stem from specific message manipulations and 2) inadvertently introducing message confounds. To address this issue, we introduce construal-level theory as the theoretical lens to design and identify potential confounds in fear-appeal manipulations. We further discuss how researchers can seamlessly integrate construal-level theory into information security studies based on protection motivation theory. Our work has important theoretical and methodological implications for IS security researchers

Visualizing Values: A Content Analysis to Conceptualize Value Congruent Video Messages Used in Agricultural Communications

Visual messaging is becoming the new avenue to connect with consumers. The majority of the American public is not connected with agriculture and often questions procedures, practices, and tactics within the industry. Practitioners and researchers have suggested value congruent messages, a type of emotional appeal, may increase attention to agricultural messages. However, limited research has been conducted to define and investigate value congruent messages in agricultural communications. The purpose of this study was to describe the presented messages in videos used in one agricultural advocacy effort, CommonGround’s “Nothing to Fear Here” campaign. This content analysis described the video’s message content and use of value congruent messages. Schwartz Theory of Basic Human Values (2012) was used to identify the values present in each video within the campaign. The values of benevolence, security, self-direction, universalism, and hedonism were common values displayed in the campaign. Message sensation value was calculated, and it was found the videos had moderate levels of emotional arousal. The primary characters in the videos were mothers, farmers, and children. More research should be conducted to explore how the value congruent messages and message sensation value interact to increase a receiver’s level of attitude change after viewing the message

The role of dispositional factors in moderating message framing effects

Objective: Health messages can be framed in terms of the benefits of adopting a recommendation (gain frame) or the costs of not adopting a recommendation (loss frame). In recent years, research has demonstrated that the relative persuasiveness of gain and loss frames can depend on a variety of dispositional factors. This article synthesizes this growing literature to develop our understanding of the moderators of framing. Method: A systematic review of published literature on gain and loss framing was conducted. Articles were retrieved that tested the interaction between framing and moderators representing individual differences in how people are predisposed to think, feel, and behave. The significance and direction of framing main effects and interactions were noted and effect size data extracted where available. Results: Forty-seven reports published between January 1990 and January 2012 were retrieved that reported on 50 unique experiments testing 23 different moderators. Significant interactions with typically small to medium simple main effect sizes were found in 37 of the 50 studies. Consistent interactions were found for factors such as ambivalence, approach–avoidance motivation, regulatory focus, need for cognition, and self-efficacy beliefs. Less consistent effects were found for perceived riskiness of activity, issue involvement, and perceived susceptibility/severity. Conclusion: The relative effectiveness of gain- or loss-framed messages can depend on the disposition of the message recipient. Tailoring the frame to the individual therefore has the potential to maximize message persuasiveness

Deliberative Constitutionalism in the National Security Setting

Deliberative democracy theory maintains that authentic deliberation about matters of public concern is an essential condition for the legitimacy of political decisions. Such deliberation has two features. The first is deliberative rigor. This is deliberation guided by public-regarding reasons in a process in which persons are genuinely open to the force of the better argument. The second is transparency. This requires that requires that officials publicly explain the reasons for their decisions in terms that citizens can endorse as acceptable grounds for acting in the name of the political community. Such requirements would seem to be especially important in the national security setting, where decisions can have profound life-and-death consequences. Yet this is the setting in which transparency often is least feasible on the part of the Executive branch. Officials may be constrained for good reasons from fully explaining the bases for their decisions. While such reason-giving is especially important to the perceived legitimacy of a decision, anticipating the need to provide it also can enhance deliberative rigor. Limited transparency thus creates the risk both that crucial decisions may not be regarded as legitimate, and that the deliberative process will not be as robust as it should be. In this chapter, we argue that ensuring robust internal deliberative processes in the national security setting can compensate at least to some degree for this limitation. Appreciating the demands of deliberative democracy theory can help inform this process by illuminating how various procedural mechanisms may promote the goals that transparency purports to serve. We focus on the Lawyers Group, which includes senior national security lawyers from across the government, as an example of an arrangement that can help further the ends of deliberative democracy by providing a vehicle for deliberation that meets many, even if not all, of the requirements of that theory. Coordinated by the legal advisor for the National Security Council, this group discusses national security issues that will be presented to the President. We regard our analysis as contributing in two ways to deliberative democratic theory. First, it focuses on the possibility of satisfying the requirement of this theory in a setting in which decision-making often falls short of the demands of full transparency. Second, it suggests how legal analysis may play a distinctive role in the deliberative process. There are limits to what the Lawyers Group can accomplish. We believe, however, that it should be assessed in terms of its contribution to the larger national security deliberative system of which it is a part. From this perspective, the Group’s compliance with several prescriptions of deliberative theory helps it strengthen, even if it does not guarantee, the rigor and persuasiveness of the justifications that the President is able to provide for national security decisions

Persuasion: an analysis and common frame of reference for IS research

Information Systems (IS) researchers persistently examine how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) changes attitudes and behaviours but rarely leverage the persuasion literature when doing so. The hesitance of IS researchers to leverage persuasion literature may be due to this literature’s well-documented complexity. This study aims to reduce the difficulty of understanding and applying persuasion theory within IS research. The study achieves this aim by developing a common frame of reference to help IS researchers to conceptualise persuasion and to conceptually differentiate persuasion from related concepts. In doing this, the study also comprehensively summarises existing research and theory and provides a set of suggestions to guide future IS research into persuasion and behaviour change

Fear appeal message repetition in public service announcements: A cross-cultural comparison

This research aims at examining the usage of fear appeal in public service announcements (PSAs) of different topics across different countries. The study uses a purposive sample of audio/visual advertisements that tackles a variety of social, health and safety topics across different cultures either in English or Arabic languages or with subtitles. The study is intended to compare the usage of fear appeal in PSAs that are targeted for social change across different cultures in terms of content and methods used to scare audiences. A non-probability purposive sample has been obtained through extensive search online that resulted in a non-even number of PSAs from each country. A sample of 72 PSAs has been collected, including 17 different PSAs tackling issues from UK, 20 from USA, 6 from Canada, 4 from France and 5 from Ireland, Australia and Egypt have 3 different PSAs each, 2 PSAs from Switzerland and South Africa each, 4 from Saudi Arabia and Spain, New Zealand, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Scotland are represented with 1 PSA in the sample. Through analysing these PSAs, the research has concluded that some of the main variables are similar across all countries and topics: the how these PSAs use negative framing in conveying the message, the high levels of depicted severity in the PSAs and the portrayal of harm affecting oneself. Other variables, such as: narrations of the PSAs, being part of a campaign, tone of voice, how the fear is portrayed, and levels of susceptibility are somehow similar with minor differences and majorities portraying the same results. The place where the PSA is taking place, the number of actors depicted in the PSAs, gender of those actors, and the suggested behaviours are variables that differ across the PSAs

An investigation into the moderating role of fear appeals on the relationship between regulatory fit and persuasion

As one of the ways to persuade young people effectively, several scholars have indicated that using a tailored message that is consistent with individuals’ concerns and interests can influence their attitude and behavioral changes. Among diverse tactics to construct tailored health-messages, this research especially paid attention to individuals’ motivational goals (i.e., regulatory focus) that make them more inclined to a certain outcome. While promotion-oriented individuals primarily focus on how to achieve a desired ending, prevention-oriented individuals mainly focus on avoiding undesirable outcomes (Higgins, 1997; Higgins et al., 2001). Although numerous studies support the positive effects of the congruency between regulatory focus and message frame on persuasion, the researcher was concerned with the limited discussion about the effects of some message attributes (i.e., fear appeals) in tailored health-related Public Service Announcements (PSAs). In particular, a large number of health campaigns provide information in the context of highly emotive graphic images and text; however, the stimulus used in previous studies did not consider such factors’ possible moderating effects. In the context of an anti-binge drinking health campaign, the researcher therefore focused on how the level of fear in tailored messages influences college students’ perceptions of the message, their message processing, and their attitudes and behavioral changes. Using a 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) X 2 (message framing: gain vs. loss) X 2 (level of fear appeals: low vs. high) experimental design, the researcher found that messages that are consistent with individuals’ interests are more persuasive. When the tailored message contained a low fear appeal, more fluent message processing and greater perceptions of message relevance occurred, which in turn impacted persuasion. However, the findings indicate that message effectiveness should be discussed cautiously because the effectiveness of tailored messages is reduced when combined with a high fear appeal. Overall, this study advances our understanding of how a tailored message’s attributes influence individuals’ message processing and persuasion. The findings have practical and theoretical implications for future studies on the use of emotional appeals in persuasive advertising