The Influence of Human Factors on the Intention to Report Phishing Emails

Abstract

Phishing attacks are a main threat to organizations and individuals. Current widespread defenses based on spam filters and domain blacklisting are unfortunately insufficient. Prior work identifies phishing reporting as a key, largely untapped resource to mitigate phishing threats. Yet, its practice suffers from very low reporting rates and generally too low an uptake from users. Whereas it is known that phishing reporting behavior is affected by a number of ‘human factors’, a comprehensive view of the different theories and their effects on (intent to) report is not yet developed. To address this gap, we evaluate theories and factors analyzed in the extant literature, build a cohesive theoretical view of their effects and constructs, and develop, model, and empirically evaluate (by means of an online questionnaire, n=284) the resulting hypothesis structure. We discuss both theoretical implications of our findings and research directions for practice at a research and organizational level.