Research on University Students’ Information Security Behavior: The Moderating Effect of Disciplinary Background

While social networking sites (SNSs) provide university students with more diverse channels for information transfer, they also pose certain risks to their personal information security. Previous studies suggested that users’ information security behavior is an effective way to prevent information security risks. Based on Technology Threat Avoidance Theory (TTAT), this study constructs a model to explore the influencing factors of information security behaviors of university students in SNSs. Specifically, this study focuses on the moderating effect of disciplinary background in the proposed model. An empirical study was conducted to verify the model. Consistent to the previous literature, the results show that self-efficacy and response efficacy have positive effects on perceived avoidability; perceived threat and perceived avoidability have positive effect on information security behavior. Further, disciplinary backgrounds moderate the relationship between perceived threat and perceived avoidability on information security behavior. Specifically, perceived threat motivates students in soft disciplines to take information security behaviors more than it motivates students in hard disciplines, while perceived avoidability motivates students in hard disciplines to take information security behaviors more than it motivates students in soft disciplines. Based on this, we put forward the information security protection countermeasures.