The Transtheoretical Model, Stages of Change and Decisional Balance as Predictors of Behavioural Change in Internet Privacy and Security

• Main Author: Ting, Pei-Ju Lucy
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Manchester 2006

Reports of Internet fraud and Internet threats have lost their element of surprise. However, various sources, such as governmental surveys, have indicated that the percentage of Internet users who regularly practice appropriate e-precaution methods is still low (e. g., Schultz 2005). Meanwhile, studies continue to show that fear of Internet fraud remains one of the major obstacles to the even wider spread of e-commerce (e. g., Niite and Parsa 2005). This thesis therefore investigates the decision making processes in adopting e-precaution methods, and studies the effects that marketing can have in accelerating these processes. The research design is based broadly on two theoretical constructs: social marketing and the Transthoeretical Model (TTM). Social marketing involves the application of commercial marketing concepts and techniques, in order to solve social problems; advertising is probably the most commonly used tool by social marketers to influence the public. The TTM model theorises the procedure of decision making and it is used to analysis consumer behaviour in social marketing. The TTM constructs, including the Stages of Change (SOC) and the Decisional Balance Scale items (DBS), are scrutinised for their applicability to the adoption of e-precaution methods. In addition, the effectiveness of two advertising tactics, fear appeal and message framing, are examined based on these constructs. Two e-precaution methods are assessed, checking for https and using antivirus software; respectively, 781 and 930 respondents were acquired through an Internet questionnaire data collection process. The web-based questionnaires and social marketing interventions were informed by earlier qualitative investigations. Messages designed to test the advertising tactics were the interventions shown to the respondents. Scales, including SOC, DBS and other TTM variables, were measured with multiple choices questions. Confirmatory factor analysis, ordinal logit regression, multinomial logit regression and odds ratio analysis were deployed to test the research data.