Adaptive and Maladaptive Coping with an It Threat

ABSTRACT

Numerous studies have investigated employees’ decisions to adopt IS security measures by focusing on adaptive responses. Using the Extended Parallel Processing model (EPPM), this study evaluates subjects’ adaptive and maladaptive intentions with respect to antispyware software. Our results show that both adaptive and maladaptive coping occur, and we identify antecedents of each. We advance IS security theory by considering maladaptive coping along with adaptive coping and by modeling threat and efficacy as contingent effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Antispyware
• spyware
• extended parallel processing model
• maladaptive coping
• IT security threat
• technology adoption

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Chenoweth

Tim Chenoweth is an associate professor of Information Systems at Boise State University. He received his PhD from Washington State University in 1996. His research interests include issues related to big data and data analytics as well as IT education and security.

Tom Gattiker

Tom Gattiker, PhD, CFPIM, is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at Boise State University. His research interests are in environmentally sustainable business and in the application of information systems to operations and supply chain management. His research appears in leading journals including the Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Journal of Business Logistics and MIS Quarterly. He serves as Associate Editor at Journal of Operations Management and the Journal of Supply Chain Management. He is former Chair of the Operations Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Karen Corral

Karen Corral is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Supply Chain Management at the College of Business and Economics at Boise State University. She holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan, an MS in Computer Information Systems and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Arizona State University. Her research interests are in the area of data and knowledge management as related to decision support. Her work has been published in journals such as Communications of the ACM, Information Systems Frontiers, Decision Sciences, and Decision Support Systems.