Impact of Cybersecurity Disclosures on Stakeholder Intentions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Regulators have urged companies to enhance the informativeness of cybersecurity risk disclosures in financial statements. However, little is known about how the perceived attributes of cybersecurity risk disclosures may influence various stakeholders’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Drawing on the Belief Reinforcement Model (BRM) and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study examines how privacy concern moderates the role of the perceived presence of specificity and the belief about the verifiability of cybersecurity risk disclosures on trust violation and the behavioral intentions of different stakeholders (i.e. users, investors, and employees). The evidence from our experiment suggests that the perceived presence of specific disclosure elements and the belief about disclosure verifiability influences behavioral intentions for all three stakeholders through beliefs and attitudes. Further, those influences vary depending on the level of individuals’ privacy concerns.