Gender Differences in Mobile Users' IT Security Appraisals and Protective Actions: Findings from a Mixed-Method Study

Recent reports show that mobile users often refrain from taking the necessary precautionary actions to protect their mobile devices from IT security threats. To improve users’ protective behavior, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the downstream beliefs and attitudes. Although previous IS research has intensively investigated protection behavior in the IT context, findings from psychological studies that people’s threat and coping appraisals are gender-specific are largely neglected. Drawing on gender schema theory and protection motivation theory, the present study analyzes gender differences in the formation of mobile users’ intentions to take precautionary actions and their consequent coping behavior. Utilizing a two-step mixed-method research approach (survey, experiment, and interviews) and drawing data from 177 Android users, we show that female and male mobile users’ problemfocused coping behaviors are based on different threat and coping appraisals. These findings have significant implications both for future research and for practitioners.

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