Security (Psychology)

The current study sought set to replicate and extend previous findings regarding Norris and Inglehart’s (2004) “Secure Society Theory” (SST) of religiosity, which states that religiosity varies as a function of the extent to which one feels secure in their environment. However, the relationship between individual perceptions of societal security—as opposed to national indicators—and religiosity has yet to be tested. The current study addressed this by analyzing data from the General Social Survey, supplemented by FBI and U.S. Census data. Results indicated that the extent to which one feels safe walking around their neighborhood at night is a significant predictor of religiosity, even when crime rate, poverty rate, age, sex, and race are also considered. Additionally, time series analyses of data from 1980 to 2012 with a lag of 10 years provided partial support for SST, with neighborhood fear and poverty significantly predicting future religiosity.

There is a growing need to better understand what influences user behavior for developing comprehensive IT security systems. This study integrates two prominent bodies of research, the theory of planned behavior used to frame the factors influencing user behavior and individual level climate perceptions used to frame organizational environment influences, to develop a multidimensional IT security user behavior model. The model is then used as the basis for a survey based research to empirically test the hypotheses whether the perceived IT security climate of an organization significantly influences the users beliefs regarding the use of IT security. The intent of the study is to extend the theory of planned behavior and IT security literature by investigating salient IT security beliefs and environmental influences on those beliefs. First, anti-spyware was identified as an appropriate target IT security artifact, and then incorporated into a multi-phased research approach. Second, a semi-structured interview process was used to elicit salient beliefs regarding use of the IT security artifact. Third, IT security psychological climate was conceptualized based on the extant literature on organizational climate, safety climate and IT security in order to examine the organizational environment influences on these beliefs. Finally, a survey was used to collect data to validate the constructs and test the hypothesized relationships.