Xiaofen Ma

Being a scholar is my dream. However, when I finished a short documentary about CCTV surveillance in the public sphere in Hong Kong, China, I realized that, in addition to presenting our social phenomenon, it is worthwhile to interpret the relevant rationals under social phenomena using communication insights and methodologies. 

My friends who were working at NUS computing school recommended this great university to me.

Today’s organizations are highly dependent on information security management processes. Concurrently, there is a consensus that information security (IS) employees are the weakest link in the information system chain. Many organizations expect IS professionals to be more devoted to information security protection and to have ownership over information-intensive organizations beyond simply complying with IS policies. However, IS employees being the weakest link in the information system chain has resulted in a research stream that concentrates on IS professionals’ performance of protective behaviors. This dissertation contributes to the research stream by extending the oft-cited protection motivation theory (PMT) in IS literature to include the relationship of IS professionals’ intrinsic motivation (i.e., psychological ownership (PO)) with the mechanism of PMT. To understand why IS professionals carry out protective behaviors, it is essential to consider the driving forces behind these behaviors using theories from behavioral science. In doing so, the processes underpinning these professionals’ behavioral intentions can be understood through a more in-depth approach.
This dissertation adopts a mixed-method approach. In the qualitative study, seventeen interviews were conducted in the cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan to understand how IS professionals define and perceive PO when they are committed to an organization and receive organizational support. In the first phase, this interview study explored the motives and routes leading to the PO of IS professionals in Chinese information technology (IT) organizations. The objective was to answer the question of how this psychological state is achieved through organizational commitment and organizational support—an aspect that has not been previously studied in a systematic manner in the Chinese organizational context.
Psychological Ownership is a construct of role-breadth psychological factors and resources embodying significant work-related motivational and cognitive resources. However, prior studies have not emphasized the influence of PO as a source of motivational information on IS professionals’ decisions toward IS protection. An understanding of the relationship between psychological ownership and the primary factors of protection motivation theory (PMT) elucidates how individuals’ intrinsic motivation acts as an antecedent to the PMT process, thus influencing protection motivation.
Therefore, in the second phase, a quantitative study was conducted to collect 1,254 representative Chinese IS professionals’ online survey responses through an online data collection platform. Using the data, the study investigated the impact of PO on behavioral intentions to protect information systems through its effect on threat and coping appraisals. The results of this dissertation suggest that it is highly essential to take PO into account when considering the motivational antecedent that complements PMT. The integrated model shows that among the traditional PMT independent variables, threat appraisal constructs (i.e., threat susceptibility and threat severity) are impacted by PO more strongly than coping appraisal factors (i.e., response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response cost). This finding strongly relates to the fact that when IT organizations face potential threats, IS employees with PO tend to perceive the threats more accurately and seek to protect their organizational information assets.
Although the integrated theoretical model was generally supported, coping appraisals, such as response efficacy and response cost, were not significant predictors of intention. The findings indicate that in information security protection situations in which psychological ownership is strong, an IS expert may be less concerned with how costly responses are to protect information systems. By contrast, the protective instinct to secure one’s own belongings may render response efficacy and response costs moot.
In sum, the results offer a comprehensive understanding of a network of key motivational variables in the context of IS protection. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are also discussed.

My dream comes true! I am an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China.