Factors Influencing Information Security Policy Compliance Behavior

One of the major concerns of organizations in today's networked world is to unravel how employees comply with information security policies (ISPs) since the internal employee has been identified as the weakest link in security policy breaches. A number of studies have examined ISP compliance from the perspective of deterrence; however, there have been mixed results. The study seeks to examine information security compliance from the perspective of the general deterrence theory (GDT) and information security climate (ISC). Data was collected from 329 employees drawn from the five top-performing banks in Ghana and analyzed with PLS-SEM. Results from the study show that security education training and awareness, top-management's commitment for information security, and peer non-compliance behavior affect the information security climate in an organization. Information security climate, punishment severity, and certainty of deterrent were also found to influence employees' intention to comply with ISP. The implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Internal and external drivers for compliance with the COVID-19 preventive measures in Slovenia: The view from general deterrence and protection motivation

The emergence of a pandemic is usually accompanied by different measures–economic, social, preventive, and (self)protective. In the case of the COVID-19, several preventive measures were formally enforced by state authorities in the majority of countries worldwide. Thus, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the intertwining of formal and informal social control could be observed. Hence, in this study a cross-sectional design was chosen to explore the issue in Slovenia. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first in the current literature to empirically test the general deterrence theory in pandemic circumstances (as external factors predicting individuals’ compliance with the COVID-19 preventive measures). The results suggest an important role of informal punishment, with perceived informal severity being the only statistically significant factor from the general deterrence theory. In contrast to external factors, internal factors play a significantly greater role in promoting people’s self-protective behavior in pandemic circumstances. During the unknown, the uncertain and delicate situations with which people have no previous experience, both personal beliefs about the effectiveness of measures and perceived self-efficacy are more important than fear of formal sanctions.

Crime, Protection, and Compassion

Chapter 4 sets out a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects the retributive justification for punishment, does not fall afoul of a plausible prohibition on using people merely as means, and can actually work in the real world. The proposal is largely justified as special deterrence by the right to self-defense and defense of others. This account features a quarantine analogy for a justification of the incapacitation of criminals, for example by preventative detention or monitoring, together with provisions for rehabilitation and reintegration. It also features a justification for penalties designed to secure effective general deterrence, measures that cannot be justified as special deterrence by the self-defense right. Here consequentialist considerations and duties of compensation have a justificatory role.

Do Deterrence Mechanisms Reduce Cyberloafing When It Is an Observed Workplace Norm? A Moderated Mediation Model

Despite the documented individual, job, and organizational antecedents of cyberloafing at the workplace, few studies have addressed whether, how and when group factors affect employees’ cyberloafing behaviors. Drawing on social learning theory and general deterrence theory, the purpose of this study is to test if observability of coworkers’ cyberloafing behavior affects employees’ perceptions of norms related to cyberloafing and subsequent cyberloafing behaviors and to test if sanctions can play a role in buffering these effects. An investigation of 335 employees working at Chinese enterprises establishes that observing others engaging in cyberloafing influences the employees’ perceived norms and cyberloafing behaviors and that employees’ perceived norms related to cyberloafing play a partial mediating role in the relationship between observability and employees’ cyberloafing. As predicted, we also found that perceived certainty and severity of potential sanctions for cyberloafing moderate the effect of observability on employees’ cyberloafing as well as the indirect effect of observability on employees’ cyberloafing via perceived norms related to cyberloafing. This study enriched the cyberloafing literature by revealing how observability of cyberloafing influences employees’ cyberloafing and by unveiling two boundary conditions under which the cyberloafing learning effect can be buffered.

Community sanctions: Offenders’ perceptions about their appropriateness

This study analyzed offenders’ perceptions about distinct sanctions and their adequacy for different crimes, checking if these ideas apply to their crime. We covered a total of 163 adult offenders who were sanctioned with a non-custodial order. The results show that participants tended to express a punitive attitude toward crime, apart from their offenses. Participants who committed driving or drug trafficking offenses were those that revealed congruence regarding the adequacy of the sentence and the usefulness of the sanction imposed. Regarding sentences’ purposes, we noticed most participants considered punishment and general deterrence as the primary purposes. The main contribution of this study lies in its educational value about the cognitive particularities and specific needs of each type of offender. Not attending to offenders’ perceptions regarding sanctions may function as an obstacle for an efficient implementation of the Justice, in terms of their adherence to the sanctions, and consequently their rehabilitation.

The Anti-deterrence Hypothesis

Although there is by now considerable debate on how much general deterrence effect international criminal justice has, there has been far less discussion of a discreet dimension that has long been identified in the criminology literature, namely the possibility that criminal justice would have an anti-deterrent effect. Along what lines, then, might we understand international criminal justice to be partly ‘criminogenic’? This article sketches some ways in which this phenomenon might be understood, taking into account the specificities of international justice. It argues that the risk of further violence by suspects, of imperfect justice revealing its weaknesses and creating a backlash, and of romanticization of ‘outlaws’ can all count as potential anti-deterrent effects, although their significance for the larger project remains hard to gauge.