The Role of Guilt Proneness in Information Security

In this project, we intend to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how to incentivize employees to be more compliant. The mechanisms to explain incentives include rewards/penalties, warnings, education programs, awareness programs, etc. One way to better comprehend how such incentives work is by considering the role of guilt proneness in the context of Information Security Policy (ISP) compliance. We define guilt proneness as an emotional personality trait indicative of a predisposition to experience a negative feeling about ISP violation. Identifying the roles of predispositions like guilt proneness in the ISP compliance is novel in this area and will have interesting theoretical and practical implications in information security research.