Fear might motivate secure password choices in the short term, but at what cost?

Dupuis, Marc and Renaud, Karen and Jennings, Anna (2022) Fear might motivate secure password choices in the short term, but at what cost? In: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022-01-04 - 2022-01-07.

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Abstract

Fear has been used to convince people to behave securely in a variety of cyber security domains. In this study, we tested the use of fear appeals, with the threat appraisal and coping appraisal components separately and together, on password hygiene behaviors. Fear did indeed elicit the anticipated response - people had higher levels of behavioral intention to have better password hygiene. Unfortunately, we also detected a largely negative affective response to the appeals. Fear, as a short lived emotion, can indeed be effective in the short term and snapshot-like studies like the one reported here might lead us to conclude that fear is indeed indicated and efficacious. Yet, it might well backfire in the long term, due to the negative affects that it triggers.

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