Does the Anchoring Effect Influence Individuals’ Anti-phishing Behavior Intentions?

Phishing is one of the most common types of attacks that internet users face. To combat them, it is necessary to consider the human aspect and increase users’ awareness since users are forced to decide in the moment whether information they see is legitimate or an attack. In privacy and security research, the anchoring effect, one of the nudging approaches using cognitive biases, is expected to change people’s attitudes and/or behaviors, but its effectiveness has not been deeply explored. In this paper, we develop nudging messages against phishing attacks, using the anchoring effect. We conducted two online surveys and analyzed a total of 5000 participant responses. We observed the anchoring effect in the participants’ perception of people’s probability of being victims. Then, we used questions about this probability as anchoring messages and found that the anchoring techniques increased secure behavior intentions against phishing attacks. In addition, nudging messages that combine the anchoring effect and availability heuristics improved intentions more. Our findings suggest the use of effective nudging messages to increase people’s awareness of attacks.