Cybersecurity breaches are on the rise. Extant literature in the development of strategies to enhance IT users’ online protective behaviours has neglected users’ cognitive processing of cybersecurity risk information. This study demonstrates a cause–effect elaboration procedure based on the concept of construal fit to influence online users’ cybersecurity risk perceptions. Using online experiments (N = 534), the construal fit between elaboration of causes vs effects of cybersecurity risks and perceived temporal distance (distant vs near) was manipulated. The results revealed that a construal fit between the elaboration of ‘effects’ (vs ‘causes’) and temporally ‘near’ (vs ‘distant’) cybersecurity risks enhanced users’ risk perceptions, which in turn predicted protective behavioural intentions. Ensuring construal fit is a novel, cognition-based approach to safeguard IT users against online threats. Our findings enrich existing staged theories used to investigate cybersecurity risk perceptions and suggest to practitioners that heightened cyber risk perception can effectively be induced by simultaneously enhancing the concreteness of IT users’ construal of cybersecurity incidents and emphasizing on its negative consequences (vs causes).

中文翻译：

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因果细化程序对信息安全风险认知的影响：一个解释拟合的观点

网络安全漏洞正在上升。现有的关于制定增强 IT 用户在线保护行为的策略的文献忽视了用户对网络安全风险信息的认知处理。本研究展示了一种基于解释拟合概念的因果关系阐述程序，以影响在线用户的网络安全风险认知。使用在线实验 (N = 534)，操纵了网络安全风险的原因与影响与感知时间距离（远与近）之间的解释拟合。结果表明，“影响”（与“原因”）和暂时“近”（与“远”）网络安全风险之间的解释契合增强了用户的风险认知，进而预测了保护性行为意图。确保解释合身是一部小说，基于认知的方法来保护 IT 用户免受在线威胁。我们的研究结果丰富了现有的用于调查网络安全风险认知的阶段性理论，并向从业者建议，通过同时增强 IT 用户对网络安全事件的具体解释并强调其负面后果（与原因），可以有效地提高网络风险认知。