Cognitive factors that lead people to comply with spam email

ABSTRACT

Because of the annoyance and productivity loss associated with spam email, significant resources are devoted to detect and block it. Despite these deterrents, people receive and respond to spam email in sufficient numbers to support the continuing efforts of spammers. It is surprising given this situation that little is known about the cognitive processes that message receivers apply to evaluate spam email, although such knowledge could be useful in mitigating some of its worst aspects. We address this research gap by investigating three cognitive factors that are hypothesized to motivate individuals to comply with message requests. We find receivers’ perceptions of social presence and trust regarding the message sender and, to a lesser extent, receivers’ benefit goals explain over half of the variance in their intention to comply with a message request. In addition, receivers’ identification of the message sender as having strong interpersonal ties predicts their perception of trust and benefit goals related to the message, and we find that effects of strong interpersonal ties on receivers’ intention to comply with the message request are entirely mediated by the three cognitive factors we studied. Overall, the findings indicate that receivers who read spam email evaluate messages based on diverse criteria that vary substantially based on strength of their perceived interpersonal ties with the message sender.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance
• computer-mediated communication (CMC)
• influence
• persuasion
• spam mitigation
• unsolicited email

Notes

¹ The presented email message was received by one of the authors in October 2014.

² See, for example, a review by Caruana and Li (2012) of 102 papers on spam filtering published during 2001–2010.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

E. Vance Wilson

E. Vance Wilson is an associate teaching professor of Information Systems in the Foisie School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on organizational aspects of human-computer interaction, with special emphasis on e-health, computer-mediated communication, and persuasion.

Soussan Djamasbi

Soussan Djamasbi is an associate professor of Information Systems in the Foisie School of Business and the Founder and Director of the User Experience and Decision Making (UXDM) research laboratory at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (http://uxdm.wpi.edu/). Her research focuses on user experience design and human technology interaction. Her work utilizes traditional research methods (e.g., surveys, interviews) as well as physiological measures, such as eye tracking, to assess attention, awareness, cognitive effort, cognitive engagement, and information processing behavior. Dr. Djamasbi’s research has appeared in journals such as Communications of the Association for Information Systems, AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, International Journal of Human Computer Studies, Decision Support Systems, Information and Management, and the International Journal of Electronic Commerce.

Adrienne Hall-Phillips

Adrienne Hall-Phillips is an associate professor of Marketing in the Foisie School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research focuses on studying general consumer behavior, with specific interest in topics related to technology and the digital world, engagement, and loyalty in the areas of consumer experience and entrepreneurship. She also has interests in social media and their influence on online environments.