I ntentional insider misuse of information systems resources (i.e., IS misuse) represents a significant threat to organizations. For example, industry statistics suggest that between 50%-75% of security incidents originate from within an organization. Because of the large number of misuse incidents, it has become important to understand how to reduce such behavior. General deterrence theory suggests that certain controls can serve as deterrent mechanisms by increasing the perceived threat of punishment for IS misuse. This paper presents an extended deterrence theory model that combines work from criminology, social psychology, and information systems. The model posits that user awareness of security countermeasures directly influences the perceived certainty and severity of organizational sanctions associated with IS misuse, which leads to reduced IS misuse intention. The model is then tested on 269 computer users from eight different companies. The results suggest that three practices deter IS misuse: user awareness of security policies; security education, training, and awareness (SETA) programs; and computer monitoring. The results also suggest that perceived severity of sanctions is more effective in reducing IS misuse than certainty of sanctions. Further, there is evidence that the impact of sanction perceptions vary based on one's level of morality. Implications for the research and practice of IS security are discussed.

Because violations of information security (ISec) and privacy have become ubiquitous in both personal and work environments, academic attention to ISec and privacy has taken on paramount importance. Consequently, a key focus of ISec research has been discovering ways to motivate individuals to engage in more secure behaviors. Over time, the protection motivation theory (PMT) has become a leading theoretical foundation used in ISec research to help motivate individuals to change their security-related behaviors to protect themselves and their organizations. Our careful review of the foundation for PMT identified three opportunities for improving ISec PMT research. First, extant ISec studies do not use the full nomology of PMT constructs. Second, only one study uses fear-appeal manipulations, even though these are a core element of PMT, and virtually no ISec study models or measures fear. Third, whereas these studies have made excellent progress in predicting security intentions, none of them have addressed actual security behaviors. This article describes the theoretical foundation of these three opportunities for improvement. We tested the nomology of PMT, including manipulated fear appeals, in two different ISec contexts that model PMT's modern theoretical treatment more closely than do extant ISec studies. The first data collection was a longitudinal study in the context of data backups. The second study was a short-term cross-sectional study in the context of anti-malware software. Our new model demonstrated better results and stronger fit than the existing models and confirmed the efficacy of the three potential improvements we identified.

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From a broad perspective, our research can be viewed as investigating the fit of technology to task, the user's view of the fit between technology and task, and the relative importance of each to problem-solving or decision-making performance. The technology investigated in this research is the mode of information presentation. Although there has been a considerable amount of research into problem solving using graphs and tables, until recently the circumstances in which each is more effective have been largely unresolved. Recent research has suggested that performance benefits accrue when cognitive fit occurs, i.e., when factors such as the problem representation and problem solving tools match the characteristics of the task. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the basic paradigm of cognitive fit and extensions to the paradigm in a laboratory experiment that examined the nature of subjects' mental representations as well as problem-solving performance. The experiment, using 128 MBA students in two identical, repeated measures designs, produced the following results: • Performance improved markedly for symbolic tasks when the problem representation matched the task. Performance effects also resulted from matching specific problem-solving skills to the problem representation and the task, and to a lesser extent when the skills matched the task alone. • The incremental effects of matching skills to the problem representation and/or the task were small compared with the primary effects of cognitive fit-that of matching problem representation to task. • A large proportion of problem solvers have insight into the concept of supporting tasks with certain types of problem representation and vice versa. • Participants preferred to use tables rather than graphs; they also preferred to solve symbolic rather than spatial problems. Finally, the problem representation more significantly influenced the mental representation than did task conceptualization. This research suggests that providing decision support systems to satisfy individual managers' desires will not have a large effect on either the efficiency or the effectiveness of problem solving. Designers should, instead, concentrate on determining the characteristics of the tasks that problem solvers must address, and on supporting those tasks with the appropriate problem representations and support tools. Sufficient evidence now exists to suggest that the notion of cognitive fit may be one aspect of a general theory of problem solving. Suggestions are made for extending the notion of fit to more complex problem-solving environments.

C ommunication technologies support virtual R&D groups by enabling immediate and frequent interaction of their geographically-distributed members. Performance of members in such groups has yet to be studied longitudinally. A model proposes not only direct effects of functional role, status, and communication role on individual performance, but also indirect effects through individual centrality. Social network analysis was performed on e-mail samples from two time periods separated by four years. Analysis revealed both direct and indirect effects as hypothesized; however, the indirect effects were more consistent in both time periods. The clearest findings were that centrality mediates the effects of functional role, status, and communication role on individual performance. Interestingly, centrality was a stronger direct predictor of performance than the individual characteristics considered in this study. The study illustrates the usefulness of accounting for network effects for better understanding individual performance in virtual groups.

Management, and Accounting, Management, and Information Technologies. He has served on several editorial boards, including MIS Quarterly, Data Base, and Information Systems and e-Business Management. His research studies have also been featured in outlets such as BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, and CNN Television. He is currently editing a two-volume collection of research on humancomputer interaction in the MIS field for Vladimir Zwass's series on Advances in Management Information Systems. He taught undergraduate information systems courses on the fall 1999 ABSTRACT: Although there has been a great deal of research on impression formation, little application of that research has been made to electronic commerce. A research model was constructed that hypothesized errors, poor style, and incompleteness to be inversely related to the users' level of perceived quality of an online store. Further, this perceived quality of the online store's Web site would be directly related to users' trust in the store and, ultimately, to users' intentions to purchase from the store. An experimental study with 272 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers supported all Downloaded by [New York University] at 00:16 01 August 2015 56 ANDREA EVERARD AND DENNIS F. GALLETTA the hypotheses. In addition, it was found that the relationship between the factors and perceived quality was mediated by the perception of the flaws. The perception of flaws rather than the actual flaws influenced users' perception of quality. Supplemental analysis also seemed to indicate a pattern of diminishing effects with each subsequent flaw.

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Consumers' first impressions (and loyalties) are made in the opening moments of a Web site visit and the degree to which that visit may be intruded by pop-ups, pop-unders, and banner ads.